Page 54 of Courting Danger

“Oh man,” Ocean said, giggling. “Just how bad was it? I’ve got a few friends with hippie names. Skydancer, for one, and Starshine for another.”

“Bad enough,” Danger grumbled, rubbing the back of his neck; Pope knew, Danger had told him over a decade ago, which was probably the last time he’d uttered it. “They named me Moonbeams Dream Cloud.”

Ocean winced while Roan’s mouth dropped open. Pope shot him a sympathetic look, knowing how much Danger despised the name and everything it stood for.

“How’d you manage on your own at sixteen?” Roan asked.

“Poorly,” Danger admitted. “I didn’t know shit about squat when I tore out of there, least of all the world outside where I grew up. Wasn’t used to needing money, since we grew or made damn near everything, so I tried shoplifting to keep my belly full, and of course, someone noticed and tore off after me. He’d have caught me too if I hadn’t darted across the street and nearly got myself creamed. Sleeping in a park instead of a bed was another challenge. Between the hard ground and assholes bigger thanme who took my sneakers and the shitty jacket I had, I was a mess by the time I fell in with a bunch of guys who were living in an abandoned mill. Probably wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for them. I wouldn’t call the shit we did legal, but when your bellies trying to eat itself, laws cease to exist.”

“I was fifteen when I tried to leave home for the first time,” Roan said. “Made it halfway to Nashville before I got scared and turned back. I was gone three whole days and nobody noticed.”

His words hit Pope like a dagger through the heart, the expression mirrored on Danger’s face. He was no doubt thinking about how harsh he’d been with Roan over his attention-seeking behaviors. They made a hell of a lot more sense after hearing him admit that.

“How’d you get that far?” Ocean asked. “I mean, you said they wouldn’t even get you a skateboard, so I’m guessing they didn’t give you a car.”

“Hitched a ride with a trucker at a truck stop,” Roan admitted. “When he couldn’t take me any further, he found someone who was headed in the direction I wanted to go, but that guy was weird, and I bolted at a rest stop and hung around there for a while before I was able to talk this couple into letting me ride with them. We’d only made it twenty miles or so before they started fighting worse than my grandparents, and they were always at one another’s throats, mostly about my grandfather constantly being out with the guys at the bowling alley or in someone’s basement playing poker. Well, I don’t think Gram was pissed about the poker part, just how much money he lost. At that point, I gave up because, what the hell? If everywhere was like the place I was trying to get away from, then what was the point? So when they stopped for gas I got out, thanked them, walked across the highway to the gas station on the other side of the road, and started hitching home.”

“Did you try it again?” Danger asked.

Roan’s lips, previously pressed in a thin line, curved upward into the ghost of a grin. “Not until I was ready to leave for good, and even then, I just couch-surfed around town for a while, trying to figure shit out. When I couldn’t find work, I drifted to the next town over and then the town after that about a year later when the place I was working at closed when one of the owners passed away. This is the furthest from home I’ve ever made it, not that I even think about it as home anymore; it’s been seven years since I’ve seen or talked to my grandparents.”

“How old were you when you cut out of there the last time?”

The question came from Danger, though Pope was wondering the same thing, as well as how he’d managed to get hold of the beat-up old bike he rode.

“Eighteen and a day,” Roan explained. “Figured if I stuck around any longer, they’d just kick me out anyway.”

“I’d have never lasted that long,” Danger admitted. “My old man was so anti anything he considered progress that asking a question about something was like navigating a minefield. I never knew when he was gonna go off on some rant about the government or the way technology was making people stupid. Everything new was to be regarded with suspicion or outright avoided, and I just couldn’t live that way anymore.”

“My grandfather loved gadgets,” Roan replied. “He’d drive my grandmother crazy ordering shit he saw on the internet and late-night TV. Fish finders, tabletop grills, cloths that could soak up a bunch of shit, I forget what they were called, but he’d watch infomercials and call in to get whatever it was that fascinated him at the time. He even bought one of those rotisserie things, despite hating chicken, and those steak knives that were supposed to be able to cut through a tin can. He got a total gym for fuck’s sake, claiming he was gonna get back into shape. He used it twice, cursed it out, and started hanging shop towels on it.”

Snorting, Pope could just picture it in the corner of the garage, collecting dust bunnies.

“It got to where my grandmother started meeting the UPS guy at the end of the driveway just to tell him to send back whatever it was, because it wasn’t going to clutter up the place with the rest of his crap.”

“Did it work?” Pope asked.

“Nope, Gramps started slipping him money to leave his packages at the bowling alley,” Roan explained. “That way he could pick them up the next time he was down there.”

“Bet they loved that,” Danger said.

“Meh, with as much money he spent there, I doubt they cared.”

“Did you ever learn to bowl?” Ocean asked.

“Does racking up gutter balls count?”

Giggling, Ocean sat up enough to crack his neck, then settled right back down on Pope again. “Not that I can do any better unless the rails are down.”

“Wish Gramps would have put those down for me,” Roan replied. “I might have stood a chance then.”

“I’d have preferred a cannon to shoot the ball out of,” Ocean said. “Would have been way more exciting to watch the pins explode.”

His words were met with silence, Pope’s hand stilling in his hair, his eyebrows shooting up as he cocked his head while he sat there with a cartoon version of Ocean’s description rolling through his head until the shock wore off and he started laughing.

“Would have cost them a fortune in bowling pins,” Roan remarked, snickering.

“And pinsetter repairs when the ball wrecks the fuck out of them,” Pope finally said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But you nailed it when it comes to the exciting part. Would be a hellof a thing to see, as long as you could watch from a safe, armored bunker to protect from ricochets.”