Million Dollar Road by Amy Connor Page A

stalked past the two boys without speaking and headed to her room to put a door between her and all that monster slaying and treasure collecting.
    Getting to shut the door was the only advantage to being the girl in the house: her stepfather got the other bedroom while Wolf slept on the sofa, something he’d done once Lireinne and her brother had gotten too big to share a room. This summer, that had seemed to suit Wolf just fine. He’d stayed up practically all night, every night, playing EverQuest like a skinny, black-clad bat with an Xbox.
    Lireinne worried about Wolf’s being alone so much, except for that creep Bolt. Why couldn’t her brother have some normal friends? It would be September soon. When was he going back to school? Lireinne hoped he’d meet a nice girl this year, maybe one who was into band, played the clarinet or whatever. Someone who didn’t have multiple piercings or a shaved head. Like, did Goth girls try to be ugly?
    On her single bed beneath the faded travel posters of Paris and Oslo Scotch-taped to the wall, Lireinne settled herself to paint her toenails. She’d rescued the posters from the Dumpster behind the school a couple of years ago when the World History teacher had thrown them out.
    For years, Lireinne’s big, secret dream had been to go to Paris. The posters were supposed to be a reminder that sometimes people were so freaking lucky—or rich—that they got to get on a plane and go wherever they wanted. The taped-up pages from Vogue, the ones of cool, superthin models hanging out on the Champs-Élysées and at the Eiffel Tower, were like an invitation to a party she knew she’d probably never get to attend, but Lireinne harbored a secret hope that someday, somehow, she’d find herself there. It was a stupid hope, though: unlike her, those hyper-elegant, racehorse girls were, like, so totally in charge of their own lives. They’d never find themselves hosing at an alligator farm, not them. They wouldn’t be caught dead in shrimp boots instead of Jimmy Choos.
    â€œBien sûr, chérie.” Lireinne had taken French her sophomore year and still tried to remember the little she’d learned, just in case she made it to Paris before she died.
    She’d just finished painting her toenails with a new neon-pink polish when through her closed and locked door she heard her stepfather come home. The walls in the trailer were so thin that even over the racket of the Xbox, Bud might as well be talking in her room.
    â€œHey, Wolf. Yo, Bolt. What y’all up to?” Bud sounded worn-out.
    His Saturday job with the well-diggers over at the Pentecostal church was a bitch and a half. Poor Bud never got a day off. He worked all week for the Walmart distribution center in Hammond unloading freight on the dock, and then he’d spend his nights and weekends doing part-time work with the well-drilling outfit. Oh, once in a while he’d get a Sunday free, but then he went all comatose in his room like he was a freaking turnip.
    Bud had always said that if you worked hard you got ahead. Lireinne had her doubts about the truth of that. Bud Hooten worked harder than anyone Lireinne had known in her whole life and he was always, always behind.
    Outside in the hall, his heavy footsteps set the trailer floor to shivering on its cement blocks. The footsteps stopped outside her door when Bud knocked gently. “Lireinne? You in there, honey?” Bud had always been really great about her locked-door policy.
    Lireinne screwed the top back on the bottle of pink lacquer. “Coming.” Careful not to smear the wet polish, she walked on her heels across the matted shag carpet over to the door and opened it to her stepfather. “Hey, Bud. How’s it going?”
    â€œIt’s going.” A heavily muscled, bald-headed man, his hairy arms covered in faded merchant marine tattoos, Bud Hooten leaned against the door frame and smiled.