Free Dead on the Delta by Stacey Jay

sorry.” Fernando wraps his arm around me and hugs me to his side, not even flinching when a bit of hot wing sauce transfers itself from my fingers to his forearm.
    “It’s okay. It’s just been a rough day.”
    “I know. I heard. We all heard. We promised not to talk to you about it.”
    “Good idea. Let’s stick to that plan.”
    “Okay, then let’s talk about something else upsetting.”
    “Do we have to?” I reach for another wing.
    “Well, Theresa didn’t want me to tell you.” Fernando pauses, making sure that Theresa is still in the back rustling up food.
    “So maybe you shouldn’t tell me.” I’m not really in the mood for more bad news.
    “I think you need to know this particular bit of nasty.” He drops his voice further, playing up the drama. “Amity Cooper was in here about twenty minutes ago looking for the ‘redheaded slut.’”
    “How do you know she was talking about me? Patrick’s a redhead and I hear he’s a real whore when he’s loaded.”
    I know Amity doesn’t care for me. The hateful glares across the supper table on Sundays tipped me off even before she cornered me at the grocery and threatened me with the wrong end of a loaf of garlic bread. She’d actually poked me in the chest and warned me not to “fuck with Cane.” I assumed she meant metaphorically, but maybe she was being literal and the rumor of my afternoon tryst with her brother has pushed her to the edge.
    But whatever. She could tumble over that edge and lose her crappy weave on the way down for all I care. “Meh. Sticks and stones.”
    “No, seriously,” Fernando says. “I think she’s out for white-girl blood. I’ve never seen her so pissed. She was out of her mind.”
    Hunh. Odd. Amity isn’t usually the type to make a public scene. Even the garlic bread incident was conducted in a quiet, otherwise abandoned corner of the Piggly Wiggly in appropriately hushed tones. “Did she say why she was so angry?”
    “No, and none of us were about to ask.” Fernando shakes his head, real fear in his eyes. “Her claws were all the way out and jewel-tipped.”
    “Weird.” It
is
weird. I wonder what I did?
    “I was just glad you weren’t here. She could totally take you in a bitch fight.” Fernando steals a piece of my celery, carefully wiping off a lingering bit of sauce with a napkin. “You should talk to Cane about her, asap. She needs to realize she can’t mess you up just because she’s related to half the policemen in town.”
    “She won’t ‘mess me up.’ Her mother would kill her for being that tacky.” I wave at Theresa as she exits the kitchen with a tray full of cheeseburgers and cheesier, gravier fries, giving her the universal sign for “bring more beer.” “She’s not nearly as tough as she likes people to think.”
    “No, she’s not, but she’s crazy. She really is, Lee, you need to listen to me.” Fernando grabs my wrist, squeezing hard enough to make me wince before letting go. “Some guy got knifed last night at Coop’s,” he says, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder, as if the knife-wielder might be lurking in wait behind the poker machine. “They kept it quiet and off the police scanner, but there’s gang shit going down at that club. You can talk ‘town reclamation’ all you want, but this place is starting to get skankier than a—”
    “Ease up.” I refuse to let him finish his no-doubt colorful simile. “I moved here right after the mutations, and I heard people talk about what it was like before. Donaldsonville was post-apocalyptic before a single terrorist set off a bomb in a chemical plant.”
    Fern sighs, and does another spooked scan of the bar. “Maybe so, but—”
    “We came together and made this town something better,” I say, genuinely irritated with him for the second time in one day. “It’s Mayberry around here compared to those last few years before the mutations. So give it a break.”
    He stares at me for a beat before smiling