Free Stony River by Tricia Dower

only funny line in that hokey show Ma loved. Her shaky voice tumbled out huge in the high-ceilinged room.
    She waved the flashlight around, lighting up cupboards, a bucket in the sink, a pan on the wood stove. The air reeked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon had sloshed through. The flashlight landed on a light switch. A dud. She ventured deeper into the room, whipping around each time a floorboard squeaked. Stumbled over an empty dog dish, making it rattle.
    In a room off the kitchen sat six chairs and a fancy table even bigger than Linda’s. Beyond that, a circular staircase split the house. She shot a beam up to the landing. The darkness closed around the beam like a fist. Tomorrow, in better light, she’d climb the stairs. The flashlight guided her to a room as big as her family’s whole apartment. A picture window, shuttered from outside, reflected the flashlight. The lumpy dark furniture could’ve been Dracula’s. The air was cold and the radiators silent. At home they’d be banging out heat, Ma moaning because only the super could control them.
    She tried another light switch. Crap. It wasn’t too late to go home. Ma and Jimmy would be drinking beer and sitting on the floor watching TV because they didn’t have a couch. Jimmy might have had enough beer to forget he was mad at her. She was pretty sure he was bluffing about knowing what she was doing at Tony’s.
    She’d been sneaking into men’s cars a couple times a week after school for over a month. The idea had come to her after she found out Linda’s old man dropped off their turd-brown Nash at Tony’s Garage in the morning when it needed work and walked to his job. Linda’s ma didn’t drive. Once the car was fixed, it would sit behind the garage with the others, where the mechanics couldn’t see, until Linda’s old man returned. Tereza cut school one day to check it out for herself. Most men leaving cars wore suits and hats and carried briefcases. They looked well off. And safe.
    Tereza chose newer cars with full ashtrays. She’d have the Wonder Bread bag of tobacco in her pocketbook as she hid in the back, turningherself into a ball on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Sometimes she had to wait a leg-cramping hour or more, but wondering who might turn up gave her a charge—like buying Cracker Jacks not knowing the prize you’d get.
    After a man drove a short distance away, she’d edge onto the back seat and make little waking-up sounds, scaring the bejesus out of him. He’d pull over and she’d apologize, handing him a story about not getting any shuteye because she didn’t want to disturb her dying mama lying in the only bed in the teeny room they rented. She’d tell him she was selling tobacco to pay for the doctor. She’d practiced her naive, pitiful come-on look in the bathroom mirror for days before the first time. Some men went apeshit and ordered her out. A few forked over a couple bucks and a lecture. But there were others. She’d taken in forty-three bucks so far, none from tobacco. But if Jimmy knew now because Tony had found out, she was screwed.
    Heavy dark drapes covered the two living-room windows. Tereza yanked on one set until rod and all crashed in a dusty, coughing cloud. She blanketed herself in the drapes and sat on a couch, hugging the flashlight as a weapon to her chest, her sharp ears listening to the house stretch and yawn, burp and fart. She dragged three chairs from the dining room and stacked them against the back door. Anyone trying to get in would make a racket and warn her.
    Back on the couch, she closed her eyes and saw the dead-giveaway plywood she’d left on the ground. To the kitchen again, to unblock the back door. No sign of other earthlings. She stepped outside, dragged the board into the kitchen, dropped it on the floor and blocked the door again. Maybe now she could sleep.
    She shrugged off her shoes,