Based on the song "Life on Mars" by David Bowie...
Someone is killing girls in the little town of Nowhere, South Dakota and they all look like Fiona Mars.
Fiona has a secret she can't quite remember. A secret her father, the Sheriff, is trying hard...
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"I need a boy."
"This is not an escort service."
"I'm looking for one. He's tall. He smokes...a lot."
"Lady, hang up."
"Wait, call room twenty...Please."
I twisted the plastic coated phone cord around my finger and leaned against the kitchen wall. The phonebook spread its ribs on the kitchen table. I'd spent an hour leafing through tattooed pages trying motel numbers. Nowhere South Dakota had about as many motels and hotels as there were pages in the phonebook. Not many. Mostly, men answered after the front desk rang. But the dissonance behind their steady voices warned me off. Lives breaking had a stiff shhhhhhh sound I recognized from movies with oceans. The sound of waves beating sand to death. Those men weren't the go-lucky drifter I'd ditched at the town theater. They were drowning.
I had two more numbers to try after this one. The telephone buzzed twice.
"Hello?"
The quickness surprised me. "Hi," I said and squeezed my fingertip yellow.
It was him. Lucky Strike. "Who is this?" he said, and I licked my lips because he wouldn't know me even if I told him. We never traded names. Would he remember? Would he still be angry that I'd left him?
He exhaled. "Hello?"
"It's Mickey Mouse," I said.
The line clicked. I thought he hung up, but then he said,
