Free The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

slicked out to
    wet the seam and seal it.
    “A little Mary Jane to start your morning?”
    “Oh, hel , yes.” Heather put the joint between her lips, bouncing
    when he brought up his lighter to give her a spark. During afternoon
    picnics by the riverside, it wasn’t that uncommon for Rook, Heather,
    and me to pass one around until we laughed and sprawled, skirts and
    limbs flopped over each other like a snuggly litter of puppies.
    Dragging on his cigarette, Milo folded his arms. “You know, the
    rest of the trash livin’ in this dump would string you up by your long
    skirt if they knew what you real y came here for.”
    “I. Don’t. Care,” Heather said and blew out smoke with each
    word.
    “People ’round here have heard about what creepy shit you hea-
    then weirdos are into.”
    67
    Heather laughed again. “You watch your mouth, roller scum. You
    know well as I do that we ain’t heathens, just simple folk.”
    “In some places, simple means dumb.”
    He gave her a crooked grin. She raised her middle finger, laughing
    and smoking. “You think you know me so wel .”
    Milo leaned against the trailer door, his hand coming down to
    smack the red lid of an orange drum beside the front stoop. It was
    marked with a big label reading biohazard. “You’re smart, but you
    do dumb things. Like hang out here.”
    She shrugged. “I gotta get my fix.”
    The quirk was gone from his mouth as he sucked the last of his
    cigarette, blowing out the smoke from his nose in twin streams. “You
    always get what you want, don’t you? ’Cause you’re you, and no one’s
    gonna say no to you.” His eyes went dead as he fixed on my cousin.
    “Milo.”
    “I just don’t want nobody to get hurt, that’s al ,” he said, a touch
    of tenderness creeping into his voice. Then he dropped his cigarette
    butt to the ground.
    Heather squashed the filter under her foot and picked it up, dis-
    carding the wasted filter in his palm. “Keep that poison outta the soil.”
    “I’m mighty sure there’s worse comin’ for me than a few cancer
    cel s.”
    With a jut of her hip, Heather waved off, ducking under the trees
    and slipping through a gap in the fence. August and I stayed frozen,
    my eyes trained on the red fire of my cousin’s hair as she sauntered
    down the road.
    68
    Standing in a cloud of smoke, my legs grew heavy. “I don’t like
    this.”
    August’s nose wrinkled. “Stay away from him.”
    “I doubt Milo gives a damn about me.” My knees buckled, and
    I slumped beside a tree. “Milo’s got his sights set on Heather. Like
    everyone else.”
    “Don’t be like that.”
    “L-like what? Like I’m sick of being forgotten? So what if I don’t
    laugh as loud or talk as much? It’s always her and what she can get,
    and since I’m her cousin and her best friend, I gotta be h-h-happy. If
    I say I’m not, I come off like a jealous bitch.”
    August knelt beside me. Why I’d poured out all that to him, I
    didn’t know. Because he was there? Because he wasn’t threaded in
    the knot that Rook, Heather, and I had become?
    His dye-stained fingers withdrew a necklace of a leather cord

strung through an acorn from his pocket. “Heather doesn’t get ev-
    erything.”
    He lowered the necklace into my palm.
    I curled my fingers around the acorn. It was still warm from his
    pocket. “August, this is sweet.”
    His mouth cracked in a smile. “Let me put it on you.”
    He swept aside my hair to expose my neck. His thumbs treaded
    down the bumpy ridge of my neck bones and then he looped the
    cord and tied it. The acorn fell just above my breasts. Acorns came
    from oaks, trees that were sturdy hard to break. They didn’t have to
    grow in a grove and did fine all alone.
    69
    A red curl hopped along the oat grass field, bobbing low, then
    high, an undulating wave.
    “August?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Did you . . .” I trailed off, brushing dirt and roots from my skirt
    as I clambered to the road. I felt the red curl’s pul , and I