Free Dead Spell by Belinda Frisch

back board and rolled her on it. “Charity, it’s Bill. Come on, wake up.” He lifted her lids and shined a pen light in her eyes. “Charity, can you hear me?”
    Her mother grunted and Harmony sighed with relief. She was going to be all right. She had to be.
    Two police cruisers pulled up to the swarm of neighbors crowded together out front: filthy children with no shoes and drunken parents, toothless, elderly women with filterless cigarettes perpetually fixed between their puckered lips, drug dealers and clients, most of which booed the officers. Harmony used the chatter for cover and headed to Lance’s.
    The door opened before she could even knock.
     “What the hell are you doing here?” He tied his hair back in a black rubber band and slipped a pair of sneakers on his bare feet.
    “I need your help.”
    “Like you needed my help the other night?” He pointed at his blackened, swollen eye.
    “I don’t have time for this.” One of the cops was looking around for something she figured was probably her.
    “I have to come in.” She shoved past him and closed the door. “Listen, just let me explain.”
    He sat on the arm of the sofa, clearly aggravated.
    “I wasn’t going to keep the car, Lance. You know that. You fell asleep and I just borrowed it.”
    “I fell asleep, right, nothing to do with that pill dust in my drink? Shitty that you’d pull that on me, Harm.”
    “Pull what? What are you talking about?” She meant to rinse the cup and forgot.
    “And you won’t even fess up. That’s the worst part.”
    He stood and crowded her toward the door, closing in on her in a cold, threatening manner.
    She felt pressured to go, but couldn’t leave. Not with the cops kicking around. She settled on a viable story and started to cry.
    “You want to know why I took your car? Fine. I went to end it with Adam. I was going to tell him that I wanted to be with you. That’s why he attacked you.”
    It was a perfect little logical lie.
    “And what happened when you tried?”
    She had to be careful. Either they hadn’t told them they’d found her at the cemetery or he was giving her enough rope to hang herself. “Then Brea called me and begged me to take her to Oakwood which was where they arrested me. At that point, I was at Adam’s mercy. I needed bail.” She pressed her lips to his, tilting her face so he would feel the tears.
    He kissed her back, but she could feel his reluctance.
    “I need you to get me out of here before he finds me.”
    He withdrew and she knew it was the wrong thing to say.
    “I can’t keep doing this. I’m not getting between you two and I’m certainly not getting the crap beat out of me again. You need to leave.”
    He opened the door. The crowd had cleared. The ambulance was gone, but she couldn’t go home. Child Protective Services was surely looking for her. She couldn’t go back to Adam’s either and though she’d slept on the streets before, it was far too cold. He was her only option. “Lance, come on. Let me stay tonight, please?”
    “No,” he said, “not this time. Fix your own goddamned mess.”

 
     
    19 .
     
    Harmony walked away from Lance’s trailer feeling like a roadside discard. Her eyes stung and her nose filled up from holding in the tears. This was the most alone she ever felt and, as she opened the door to her cluttered trailer, she calculated her options: live tortured or die.
    The place stunk of urine, kerosene, and vomit.
    The floor was only clear where the medics had worked on her mother.
    “No one should live like this.” She ripped off the bandages that Adam dressed her cuts with and picked the fresh scabs until they bled.
    “You’ve been waiting for this, Tom. You want me, take me.” She dug her nails into the edge of the deepest cut, but the barely healed scab wouldn’t budge. “You want to see me hurt myself? Is that it?” She took a dull knife from the cluttered kitchen drawer and tore it through the scab, clenching her teeth to