POPS’ GIRL

POPS’ GIRL
by Rebecca Rowland

Pops sits in his truck in the snow-covered parking lot, waiting for me to emerge each afternoon at 2:45, sharp. There’s a bus that stops in front of our apartment—a yellow school bus, not public transportation—but Pops doesn’t want me to take it.

“Strangers and us don’t mix,” he says. “The fewer people we meet, the safer we are.”

I can’t argue with that.

Everyone is a stranger to me and Pops. We move so frequently, school administrations always assumes that I’m from a military family. Pops does work for the government, but not in a position that requires a uniform. He sifts through code on the six computers that have occupied each of the thirteen second bedrooms I’ve seen over the course of my seventeen years. The door to his work room stays shut; I respect Pops’ privacy, and he respects mine.

Mostly.

I have my own room. Pops sleeps on the couch. He says it’s to keep his work and home life separate, but we both know the real reason.

We’ve been in this new place for five months now, arriving just in time for me to begin my senior year of high school. I like this city, an eclectic mish-mash of gritty urban filth and creaky New England stoicism. There are wealthy neighborhoods and there are poor slums, and our apartment building is a clay-colored box straddling the line between them.

I don’t want to move again.

I like my school, too, though everything in it seems covered in a fine lacquer of isinglass: old and faded like a piece of cheap artwork left out in the sun. Even the teachers appear shell-shocked, zombie figurines trapped inside plastic packaging.

Ms. Rose, my English teacher, has skin so pale, a roadmap of red and blue capillaries zigzags beneath her skin. When I daydream, I imagine her impaling an arm against the metal corner of the chalk tray, a geyser of blood spurting from the gash while Pops stands in the doorway behind her, his eyes fixed like a sniper rifle on me.

One morning, she asks me to stay after school to go over my application essay for college. I don’t plan to go to college, and I tell her so. Pops never went, and I’ve never gone to bed hungry or wanted for anything. Except autonomy, of course. She crosses her arms over her chest but says nothing.

When the bell rings for final dismissal, I pull my heavy coat from my locker and walk to the parking lot. When I open the passenger door and climb inside, the engine isn’t on, but the key hangs in the ignition, draining the battery. Pops is listening through the speakers to one of the playlists I made him. The song ends abruptly, and in the two seconds of silence that follow, Miss Rose’s head appears on the other side of the driver’s side window. When Pops turns the key forward, Miss Rose raps curtly on the glass.

She introduces herself, thrusting a mittened hand toward Pops as the barrier sinks slowly down into the door frame. Her eyes dart everywhere around the interior.

I catch Pops up on our earlier exchange.

“Miss Rose,” Pops says, rubbing the back of his hand under his chin, his coarse beard making a sandpaper sound clearly audible over the music, “I monitor my daughter’s welfare closely. But she’ll be eighteen in three days. If she doesn’t wish to go to college, that’s her choice.”

One of Miss Rose’s eyebrows lifts almost imperceptibly. “If you trust her judgement, why do you monitor her so closely?”

Pops stops rubbing his beard. “It’s my job as her father to make certain she doesn’t get into any trouble.”

“Well, it’s my job to be interested in my students’ future welfare,” Miss Rose retorts. “You can be certain—we may be a large school, but I make it my business to get to know every one of my students, their lives inside and outside of the classroom.”

Pops nods at this, smiles, and abruptly taps the button to raise up the window again. We drive away, Alison Mosshart’s vocals echoing in the silence between us.

That is the last conversation we have with Miss Rose, that anyone has with Miss Rose. The next evening, she is stabbed in her home, a sprawling saltbox Colonial nestled just a few blocks from our place. The local news says she interrupted a burglar, but we both know better, especially when Pops comes home Saturday night wearing only his tank undershirt despite the frigid January weather, carrying the ubiquitous duffel bag he keeps in his work room, has kept in every one of our second bedrooms.

On Monday, we have a new instructor for English. She is even older and whiter than Miss Rose, and I can’t stop imagining her falling face-first onto the sharp edge of the metal teacher’s desk.

When I climb into the passenger seat at 2:45, I see the familiar arrangement of boxes and suitcases stacked meticulously in the truck’s cab: all of our belongings lined up, dancers in a chorus line on their hundredth performance.

There is a frosted pink cupcake perched happily on the center console. “Can I drive?” I ask, and Pops acquiesces, and we switch sides. I am eighteen now, after all.

As I maneuver the slush-filled streets, shoveling the sugary dessert into my mouth, Pops reaches over with a tissue to wipe the crumbs that dot my chin.

I drop the cake wrapper and reach into my coat. I barely take my eyes from the road when I jam the box cutter into Pops’ throat.

“You don’t need to clean up for me anymore,” I explain to Pops, pressing the brake.

He sputters a wet, choking cough, and his lower lip and jaw glaze bright red. I wipe the blade on his flannel shirt before reaching over to pull the door latch, and I push Pops’ body into the snow.

Fiction © Copyright Rebecca Rowland
Image by D. Strohl