All Kinds of Bad

Chapter One

She’s Not Dead

When the first bullet hit the gas pump, the pump didn’t explode. There wasn’t much noise at all, just a crack of a gun and a ping of metal. But when the second bullet struck the gas station’s window, plowed through an aisle of candy, and then lodged into the wall right next to me, it made one hell of a noise.

It also sprinkled the air with candy dust. The entire store smelled of sugary fruit and chocolate, which would’ve been awesome except the drifting particles kept floating up my nose, making me sneeze. But at least I wasn’t dead. So there was that.

Miss Lanski. A short cop drilled his beady eyes into the side of my head.

But my attention was unavailable, captured by the emergency lights beyond the busted window. The lights on top of the tribal police vehicles flashed red and blue, cutting through the black sky with searing precision. Yellow police tape blocked off the entire parking lot. The Pit Stop gas station had only two gas pumps to begin with, and now we were down to one. A tiny gas station in a tiny town in the middle of South Dakota. But as the only gas station in a fifty-mile radius, we were kind of important. In our own little way.

The cop cleared his throat. Miss Lanski, are you listening to me?

I nodded.

I need you to focus and tell me—

Lydia!

I blinked at the sound of my father’s voice. His chubby form rushed toward me, his red hair messy as ever—the very genetics that explained why I always wore my hair in a ponytail. Are you all right? Are you hurt? He grabbed the sides of my head to confirm no harm had been done.

I’m fine, Dad. Technically true, but the fluttering of my heart hadn’t slowed much since the small slug of metal had careened past my temple. Every nerve in my body was on full alert.

My dad glanced at the cop. Can she go now?

The cop was a sergeant named Chet Rollins, and he looked like a mouse; dark eyes set too close together, and a pinched, turned-up nose. He had spent the past twenty minutes huffing in frustration over the fact that I hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary in the parking lot that night, and something pretty close to eye-rolling over my lack of detective skills for not even remembering my last customer. Every time he scribbled in his little black police notebook, I imagined he was writing things like, stupid kid doesn’t know anything and white girls are a pain in the ass.

He put his notebook in his breast pocket. You really didn’t see anything unusual?

No.

I’d like you to go home and make a list of all the customers that were in the store this evening. It should come to you if you sit and think for a while.

I nodded, but my memories of the evening had shattered along with the glass. Besides, I didn’t know many local people anyway. I had a lot of school acquaintances, as most seventeen-year-olds probably did, but my social circle was small. My family had only lived in Thorn Creek for one year. It was situated just inside the border of the Oahe Indian Reservation. Totally boring. Miles from anything.

And exactly 452 miles from Minneapolis, where I had spent the first sixteen years of my life.

Take this. Rollins held out a business card, and I didn’t realize until that moment that police officers even had business cards. It didn’t seem like the kind of job that should seek extra business. Let me know when you have a list, he said. The sooner the better.

I stared at the card instead of taking it, not wanting to be any more involved with the shooting incident than I already was. I didn’t want to deal with the cops. Back in the city, people only dealt with cops over bad things. I avoided bad things like my dad avoided diets.

My dad took the card and then placed an arm around my shoulder. Come on, I’ll drive you home.

My car’s in the parking lot.

You can’t take it right now, Rollins said. It’s in the investigative area. You’ll be able to get it tomorrow morning.

I exhaled, blowing my long bangs from my eyes. Fine.

My dad and I walked around Rollins, shoes crunching over the shattered glass and confectionery destruction. At the store’s front door, a middle-aged man stood in a faded blue-and-green Hawaiian shirt. My boss, Mike Iron Horse.

I had only worked for Mike for a few months. Punching buttons on the gas station cash register was hardly a dream job, but in a town of less than a thousand people, teenage jobs were scarce for anyone who didn’t want to haul hay or shovel manure. And I was definitely a no-poop kind of girl. Plus, Mike let me have all the free fountain drinks my bladder could handle. And it could handle a lot.

Thick gauze covered Mike’s upper right arm with a quarter-sized circle of pink oozing through. It’s just a graze, he had grunted after an EMT had dared to suggest a hospital. I didn’t know what had gotten Mike—a bullet, shard of glass, candy projectile?—but whatever it was, it was just a graze and he was staying put. Divorced with no kids, he was married to the gas station, having managed it for decades. The deep wrinkle between his eyebrows told me all I needed to know about his level of stress. On a good day, his bright red face looked like a zit that needed to be popped. He had now gone a shade closer to purple.

Good night, Mike, I said.

Night, Lydia. He held the door open for us with his good arm.

My dad and I slipped past him, out the door and into the cool October air. My nostrils filled with the scent of autumn leaves. And then I sneezed again.

Miss Lanski! Sergeant Rollins exited the store with the hyperactive steps of a Chihuahua. Just wanted to remind you to watch yourself at school tomorrow.

I cocked an eyebrow. Thorn Creek High School was home to less than two hundred students. Nothing exciting ever happened there. And the eleventh grade was proving exceptionally boring. Long gone was the newbie thrill of high school, and the blissful finale was still miles away. What’s going to happen at school?

Probably nothing. Rollins placed his hands on his hips. But we don’t know what’s going on here, could be some kids or maybe someone who— He cut himself off, tightening his lips. His small eyes scanned the horizon. Watch who you associate with, and let us know if you remember seeing any students here tonight.

There weren’t any students, I told him for the billionth time.

All right, well, go on home then.

I turned before he could add anything more, knowing the questioning from Rollins was just the beginning. My friends were going to pester me about everything that happened. The entire school would know by eight a.m. I pictured the next headline of the school newspaper: Lydia Lanski: The Girl Who Nearly Died.

Not exactly the legacy I wanted. I’d have preferred, Lydia Lanski: Ballet goddess with six-pack abs and a hot boyfriend. But I was oh-for-three on that front.

My feet shuffled towards my dad’s tan Tahoe parked on the street. With each step, a familiar pain pinched inside my left knee, greater than ever before. When the bullet had erupted into the store, self-preservation sent me careening to the floor with little regard as to how I fell. The moment was a blur, but the pinch in my knee told me self-preservation was not graceful.

You okay? my dad asked. He looked at my knee but fortunately didn’t say anything about it.

I’m fine.

Well, let’s get you home so you can get some sleep.

Sleep? Yeah, right.

I had never heard a gunshot before. At least not in real life. And now, I couldn’t get the sound out of my head. Despite having been mere inches from a whizzing bullet, it wasn’t until the police had showed up and said gunfire that reality had sank in: some jackass had fired real bullets in my vicinity. Near my mortal, wound-able body.

Some people sucked.

A blast of prairie wind wrapped around my body. I inhaled, filling my lungs with as much crisp air as they could hold, but it didn’t calm my nerves, and the constant gunfire in my head wouldn’t shut up.

It was going to be a long damn night.

A roar of an engine rumbled through the dead-quiet air. A silver pickup pulling a small U-Haul trailer rolled down the street in front of the station. It slowed at the blinking red stoplight at the nearby corner—the only stoplight in Thorn Creek. The pickup then turned left and roared down Highway 84, out of town. The taillights of the U-Haul trailer disappeared into the blackness.

For a moment, I wondered where it was going, and if it would take me with it.

Chapter Two

He’s Home…Whatever That Means

Someone once told me the name Nathan means a gift. I had snort-laughed when I heard that. My deadbeat dad and AWOL mom apparently didn’t think I was much of a gift. In fact, I wasn’t sure anyone would label me as such. Especially not anyone in Thorn Creek.

Thorn Creek. A shit stain in the middle of South Dakota.

I lived two miles outside of town, at my aunt and uncle’s house. My bedroom was all the way up in the attic. As far from the rest of the family as I could get. The attic air was always stuffy in October—one of those in-between times when there was no air conditioning or heating running through the ductwork of the old white house.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I grabbed a basketball from my Nike bag and pressed my fingers hard into its orange tread. I imagined chucking it into the window, shattering the glass into countless jagged pieces. A perfect homecoming gesture.

The past year had been spent living outside of Denver where my bedroom was always a comfortable seventy-two degrees. But what I liked most about Colorado was the calm of my Uncle Rodney’s house, and the clean slate I had been granted. People in Colorado hadn’t known my past. They had left me the hell alone.

But not in Thorn Creek. Everyone knew me here, and nobody minded their own damn business.

The only items currently in my bedroom—the bed, a wooden desk, and an old footlocker full of random shit—had been left behind when I had moved to Colorado. Now I was back among them. Fragments of my childhood, as familiar as a reoccurring bad dream. Sheer exhaustion closed my eyes and I lay back on my bed, calculating the hours and miles between South Dakota and Colorado.

If I leave now, I could make it back to Colorado by dawn and then—

A knock rattled my door.

What do you want? I muttered.

The creak of old hinges was loud enough to compete with the sound of my Uncle Ed’s voice. Let’s go, Ed said, sticking his head around the door. His black hair was several inches longer than it had been last year. Nearly as long as mine now, although Ed opted for a low ponytail while I wore a braid. Braids were traditional in our Lakota culture, but I wore a braid partly because it kept my hair from flying all over the place in the damn prairie winds that never stopped. Another thing I despised about South Dakota.

Ed swung the door open wider. We need to start unpacking some of your stuff so you’re not up too late. School starts at eight tomorrow morning.

Every muscle in my body clenched at the thought of having to step back into Thorn Creek High School. The glares. The whispers. Stories of my delinquent past—some true, some utter bullshit—were sure to sweep through the hallways tomorrow like the relentless wind. And then from the school hallways, it would pour onto the streets, then into people’s living rooms. The whole damn town would be talking about me in less than twenty-four hours.

Deep between my eyes, my sinuses burned. Tears would’ve sprung into full gear if not for the years of practice in shutting down useless emotions.

I rose from my bed. No tears. No words.

The attic stairs were narrow and steep, opening up to the second floor hallway near the top of the main staircase. The old wood steps of the main stairs creaked under my feet. It made me think of the times when I was younger when my friend Daniel and I would have contests to see who could find the biggest squeak—third step from the bottom, near the banister—until my Aunt Heather kicked us outside to play.

A smile almost crossed my face as I stepped down into the main floor foyer. But the smile was cut short by something soaring through the air from the living room—directly toward my face. My hand shot out and caught the baseball.

My eyes locked with my fourteen-year-old cousin Sam who was slouched on the couch, Xbox controller in his lap. Sam glared back.

Jackass.

A year in Colorado had been a much-needed reprieve from Sam, but time and distance were not magical antidotes. Sam was still a pain in the ass. And he was a pain in the ass who kept growing, encroaching on me. At eighteen and six-foot-three, I had five years and five inches on my younger cousin, but the height gap was closing fast. Stone men were tall, and it was only a matter of time before Sam would be able to look me in the eye.

But at least that’d be more convenient for punching him in the face.

My fingers clenched around the ball. I hadn’t played baseball in a few years—that was always Sam’s sport—but was confident my third-base arm could still drill a ball into his face. I raised the ball a few inches, and Sam flinched. The corner of my mouth twitched up in satisfaction. It was too damn easy. The ball slipped out of my fingers and bounced on the floor.

Nathan! Ed said. Let’s go!

I walked through the foyer and out the side door of the house. The cool wind flattened my t-shirt against my chest as the gravel of the driveway crunched under my Nikes. Beat down from the long day’s drive up from Colorado, I wanted to do anything other than unpack in that moment.

A nap was a better option. Or getting in a car and driving away.

I approached the U-Haul trailer behind the silver pickup and lifted the back door. The sight of boxes made my muscles slump.

It was gonna be a long damn night.

Chapter Three

Nope, Really, She’s Not Dead

The next morning, my dad drove me back to The Pit Stop to retrieve my car. Frankie, my red Honda CRV, sat parked by the side of the convenience store, near the fenced dumpster area. At eight-years-old and just shy of ninety thousand miles, Frankie had been around a few blocks and had seen a few things—hardened and seasoned. Yet, despite being adventurous, he seemed unhappy in his criminal surroundings.

The yellow police tape was still up around the entire parking lot, but there was only one officer on the scene: a tall man with buzzed black hair and a deep scar on his chin. I had met him once because he was my friend Nina White Eagle’s cousin, but I couldn’t remember his first name. Milo. Or Leo. Something like that.

Whatever his name was, he was far friendlier than Sergeant Rollins had been the night before. He wished me a good day, pulling back the yellow tape enough for me to drive through and onto the street. I thanked him and then sped off.

At school, I made it all the way to my locker before being hit with a barrage of questions over my near-death experience.

Lydia! Nina repeatedly yelled my name as she pushed her way down the hall, swerving through the mass of people. Her wavy black hair swished with every zig-zag movement before she stopped, inches from my face. Oh my God! Why didn’t you text me back last night?

Sorry, I said, opening my locker. I was super tired and wasn’t really thinking straight.

So, like, there were actual real bullets?

Yep.

Holy crap! Did you see who did it?

Nope, didn’t see a thing. It was all quiet and then—

A strong arm wrapped around my neck. The air in front of my face became infused with the smell of Doritos and Red Bull.

What up, girl? a low voice whispered in my ear.

I grabbed the arm and removed it from me. Not in the mood, Alex.

Alex DeMarco stepped back and leaned against the locker next to mine, his smile showing off expensively straight teeth. The perfect teeth matched his navy button-down shirt and partially rolled-up sleeves. But that was where his my-father-has-money look ended. The tall, jagged peaks of his bleach-blond mohawk were Alex’s middle finger to the world, particularly to his banker father.

I’m just seeing if you’re okay, he said. Hell of a night, huh? His crystal blue eyes glinted under the dim lights of the hallway. Not many kids on the reservation had blue eyes, and Alex used that to his advantage. Mostly with underclass girls who giggled in his presence.

I’m fine, I said.

What’re you doing after school? Finally got my new car last night. We could go for a ride or something.

What kind of car did you get? Nina asked.

Alex grinned. Mustang. Fresh off the lot. Even gotta peel the plastic off the seats myself.

It took every ounce of restraint I had not to roll my eyes right in front of him.

Alex wasn’t smug about his family’s money; he was just clueless. It was like he sincerely didn’t realize he was richer than everyone else. For the rest of us, a new car meant scouring the lots for the cheapest vehicle possible, or—as was the case with my Frankie—getting a parental hand-me-down.

Alex nudged my arm. C’mon, let me take you for a ride. Get your mind off last night.

I can’t.

Why not?

Because I didn’t want to be alone in a car with him, that was why not. He was cute and single—and smelled faintly of the cologne counter at Macy’s. Put me alone in a car with him and things were bound to happen. My hormones said Why not? but my head said Hell no. Alex had been alone in a car with a lot of girls. And I was in no rush to be just another notch on a bed post … or a dashboard.

I closed my locker. Sorry, I can’t tonight.

Alex’s face grew tight. He pushed himself off the locker to his full upright height of well over six feet. His lanky basketball-playing figure walked away without another word.

You know, Nina said, as we