Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas

imagined his parents’ dismay as they watched his skin go bad, his eyes shrink to slits. There were traces of boyish beauty underneath the wreckage, so faint they served only to magnify the beauty’s vanishing. Yet he possessed a quality more attractive—to me—than handsomeness: it was his sheer haggardness, the battered-ship’s-hull look he wore, as if a lifetime of senseless routines had etched gulleys in his cheeks.
    He looked sicker than I felt.
    After the applause, everyone shifted weight in embarrassment, still dumbfounded as to why these creatures had come into our midst. The singer barked into the microphone: We are collecting donations, as much as you can give, please digdeep because we are far from home and need gas money. Thank you!
    He picked up a coffee can and began making the rounds. Lily rifled through her plastic purse for quarters. God, I wish I had more. Only got two-seventy-five here. . . .
    I’m not giving them anything, I said.
    But you have to! she hissed. They came all this way.
    Well, they’re making a mint off everyone else.
    I had been watching my schoolmates hand them dollar bills, even fives—for a few minutes of bad music—and sensed keenly the not-so-veiled insult in it, the pirates’ assumption that we, a group of shambling hicks, would happily fork over our last coins for the pleasure of their company.
    When the singer got to us, Lily cast her eyes down and whimpered, Y’all played really badass.
    Thank you, madam, he said briskly, holding out the can to me.
    Come on, said Lily. Give him something.
    I’m broke, I said.
    Oh really, said the singer. Or is it just you didn’t like us? Got more of a taste for country music?
    No, I don’t like country.
    He smiled, took a flask from his jacket, and unscrewed it. You know what, neither do I.
    I smiled back, sipping from the proffered flask. It hurt my throat. Somebody turned on the gym lights and we all looked around anxiously.
    Guess it’s time, the singer said, to take our leave.
    In their van, my ears rang from the music and the large amounts of whiskey made available to me by Squinch. (I wondered what kind of regular name his mother had given him.) Ilooked around for Lily, convinced she had been with me the whole time, but through the smeared glass I saw the lawn abandoned, the parking lot empty. Squinch was slumped against the door with a dyed-blue forelock hanging across his cheek. Beside him squatted the drummer, scowling as he counted money from the can. Not the most lucrative shit hole, he muttered. Remind me never to book a show in Springfield again.
    This is not Springfield, I said.
    Where the hell is it, then?
    Springfield’s forty miles—
    You’re lying.
    No.
    The drummer hollered, Which one of you fuckwits booked this show?
    They bickered for a few minutes before losing interest in the fact that they had come here to take our money entirely by accident. I wanted to tell them to get a good look around since they’d never be able to find this place again.
    The other boys clambered up into the seats to prepare for departure and I was light-headed with envy at what they had in store: new roads, strange cities, a different sun rising each morning. They were going, they said, to New Orleans. A big show awaited them there.
    Squinch slid his fingers through a rip in my stocking, rested a nail briefly against my thigh, then ventured his whole hand through and promised to buy me new stockings any color I wanted. He began whispering things. The drummer had started the engine, which sputtered so grievously I couldn’t hear a word.
    My mother abandoned us, he shrieked. Me and my sisters all under the age of six, she just took off. I think she lives in California now.
    Water stood in his eyes, but it wasn’t tears.
    I shouted that I was sorry.
    He grinned and asked if I had any room in my heart for a motherless boy. I shrugged, drunk. Hey fellows, Squinch yelled up to them, I like this little one. I think we might take her.