Free The Weather by Caighlan Smith Page B

chickpeas and ignores the hum of a dying engine out front. A minute later and her mother comes around the back, face and neck and arms bright pink. When she flaps the neck of her palm tree graphic T-shirt, Lolly sees that her shoulders are a blinding white next to the burned flesh.
    â€œMa done up?” her mother asks, and Lolly nods, and her mother rubs her neck and watches the bug zapper. She says, “Tucker’s truck broke down halfway from the farm, load of cows in the trailer. Didn’t make a sound. Like they weren’t there at all. Asked Tucker, after it was done, fixed the engine, changed his tire to boot, ran it over a nail he said. Where’d he find a nail strong enough to break that kinda muscle? Asked Tucker, what’s back in the trailer? Tucker said: cows. Not one moo. Not a single moo. Coulda been an empty trailer, or they coulda all been dead. Said, Tucker, you outta check they ain’t all dead back there.”
    â€œWhere was he taking ’em?”
    â€œMacy’s Burgers. He wanted one fifty for ’em, each, but he said Macy sweet-talked him down to one oh five. That Macy.”
    â€œYeah. That Macy.”
    Lolly’s mother sits on the back steps and leans her head against the porch, still watching the zapper. “Did you catch the forecast?”
    Lolly shakes her head.
    â€œS’posed to be a storm. This Saturday.”
    Lolly’s starting to find it really hard not to look down at the base of the bug zapper, where the ground that’s dry and cracked as Granny Ma’s skin is covered in blackened bug husks.
    *   *   *
    Friday afternoon Lolly ties up her hair off her neck with an elastic band that’s lost most of its elasticity. Her messy bun flops down off her head the moment she lets it go, unraveling just like the elastic band, but Lolly’s used to it. The sweaty stickiness of her half-undone bun against her neck has gotten to be something of a comfort.
    On her way out back, Lolly finds Granny Ma leaning against the windowsill, glaring outside.
    â€œI hate the desert background,” Granny Ma says. “Why won’t it change to the waterfall? I’ve changed it three times already but it never saves. And my screensaver, that’s broken for sure. It just falls asleep eventually instead. No shooting stars. I need to go to Future Shop.”
    Lolly leaves Granny Ma to fuss over their view of the barren landscape. Thunderous hammering fills the house, making the faded family photographs swing sideways on the wall. Lolly doesn’t fix any of them, or even pick up the one that falls. It’s Granny Ma’s wedding picture, featuring a beaming fat-faced girl with a hot pink veil slung back over her brown and purple curls. She’s holding up a shinier version of her battered notebook, and the blank page opposite the keyboard shows the pixelated face of Lolly’s late grandpa. The quality of his image is so bad Lolly can’t make out the color of his eyes, but somehow she can still make out the abundance of pimples on his forehead.
    Lolly doesn’t like looking at Granny Ma’s wedding picture, but then she doesn’t like looking at any of the family pictures. They’re full of weird objects and gestures and clothing, and only ever feature people who are dead or three-quarters of the way there.
    Lolly finds her mother on the front deck, wearing her vaulting stallion graphic tee, which already has sweat stains at the back and armpits. There are two rusted nails sticking out of her lips like she’s some kind of bucktoothed vampire. Spotting Lolly, she pauses in hammering and tilts her head to the other end of the board she’s nailing over the porch window. Taking the cue, Lolly goes to hold up the board as her mother plucks out a fang.
    They’ve got half the front of the house boarded up before Lolly’s mother says, “No school today, huh?”
    â€œStorm tomorrow,”