Thaddeus clears his throat. “No dad in the picture, I guess?”
“Yeah. I mean, obviously, there was one, or I wouldn’t be here, but who he is or where he is, or if he even is anymore, is a question that was never answered.”
“That blows. LaLa’s cool, though. You could do a lot worse. I have. So, listen.”
He leans over the arm of the plastic jelly chair. I dip my head closer.
“My advice to you is to split. Run. Get the fuck out. You don’t know what’s out there, what kind of people they might place you with. LaLa’s great, but she’s rare.”
Thaddeus Roach doesn’t even blink as he tells me this, so I fully believe the potential for hideousness might be real.
It’s at this moment, so close to his face, the two of us, well, conspiratorial orphans together, and with thoughts that maybe we’ll run away together, and he’ll teach me the tricks of the street, like how to siphon money from someone’s pocket at the bus station, or how to jam food in my jacket at the Quik-E-Stop, that I suddenly wonder what it might be like to kiss him, because I’m noticing that his lips are kind of attractively plump, and I immediately lean back on my own jelly lounger, because, my God, now that I’ve kissed one boy, am I going to want to kiss them all? And also, I can’t believe I’m even having these thoughts, because my mom is dead.
I guess I kind of always thought that sort of stuff would take a backseat to death.
Death is kind of turning out to be a mean, weird bitch.
Anyway. I stop thinking about making out with a complete stranger and take a deep breath. “Thanks for the tip, but I’m not really Thelma, or Louise. I’m kind of a dork, prone to elaborate fantasizing, and I don’t know the first thing about running away.”
Thaddeus shakes his head. “Nothing to it, Tiger. You pack your bag and go, go, go. The street will teach you. I did it. Coupla times. Got caught, though.”
I look up at the sky. How many stars are there, anyway? It seems impossible to comprehend all those tiny flares of heat and light. It’s too complicated to think about, so I close my eyes.
My words come out suddenly, surprising even me.
“My mom…her thing was today.”
Thaddeus says softly, “I know.”
“I guess I just wanted to say that out loud. I don’t know why.”
“It’s cool. I mean, it’s not cool, but saying it is okay.” He pauses. “What was it like? I was really young when my real dad died. Sometimes I think I can remember him, but then I think maybe I just made up the memories to make myself feel better.”
I keep my eyes closed. I think of Mom in the plain pine box, on the table in the viewing room, and how my insides, my heart, seemed to expand and contract all at once.
How Rhonda and Cake had to come in and peel me off my mother. Pry my fingers from her thin summer dress. The way everyone sang along to her favorite song after. The dreamy Fleetwood Mac song with Stevie singing about a landslide and snow-covered hills and saying goodbye.
How Rhonda pressed the off button on the boombox and everything was done.
How I can’t take this dress off, ever, not so much because Mom never saw it on me, but because now I think it’s literally keeping me together. Holding my bones and heart and soul inside, because they’re all split and shattered, and if I take this dress off, they’ll spill out, everywhere, and I don’t have the strength to pick up the pieces.
“I don’t know how to describe it, exactly.” Spots dance on the insides of my eyelids. My heart starts to hurt again. The smell of pot drifts over my face.
“Thaddeus. Can I have some of that?”
I just want to feel something else.
He hands me the joint. It’s compact and papery. “I’ve heard people say you never get stoned the first time.”
Thaddeus laughs. “That’s not at all true.”
It smells interesting. Rich. I bring it to my lips. I could be those kids, with wet eyes and sloped shoulders, giggling in the arroyo behind Eugene Field, lighting up and not caring who sees. I could be like that. I don’t have anyone now who says I shouldn’t be.
I hand it back.
“Not tonight?” Thaddeus murmurs, taking the joint back.
“Not tonight.” See, I tell her in my head. I didn’t do it.
“Thaddeus, how long have you been here, anyway? You’re not really a foster, are you? You seem too comfortable.”
Thaddeus bites his lower lip, like he’s considering something. Then he sighs. “I’ve been here for five years. LaLa adopted me. It’s complicated. We don’t like to tell the littles about it, because then they think she’ll adopt them, too, like something magical will happen and they’ll never have to leave. It doesn’t work that way.”
He starts to say something else, but then he puts his earbuds back in, so I shut up.
I doze off for a little bit, and when I open my eyes, Leonard is there, poking my arm. He’s snuggled against Thaddeus on the other jelly chair.
“We were talking,” he grouses. “Pay attention, new girl.”
Thaddeus says, “Leonard was just asking me how far the sky, like, the universe, goes, and I was telling him no one really knows.”
“No,” Leonard corrects him. “You got all weird and stuff and said we were just like a page in someone else’s book.”
Thaddeus chuckles. He takes a pull off the joint.
“You shouldn’t be doing that around little kids, Thaddeus,” I say sharply. “Cut it out.”
Leonard shakes his head. “No, girl, he’s got a subscription.”
Thaddeus corrects him. “A prescription. For my back. It got broke once and never healed right.”
“Well, that must be a story,” I say. “People don’t just go around breaking their backs. Let me guess: Wild boar riding? Strenuous imitation of Beyoncé’s dance moves?”
Thaddeus winces. “You’re funny. Nah, just a dumb accident. Len, we need to get you back to bed, brother. I’m going to pee, and then let’s head in.” He walks to the darkness at the edge of the yard.
Leonard’s pajamas have a short red cape, which I fine oddly endearing. Maybe I’ll start to like him. Maybe the three of us can be Oliver, Sissy, and Pip, and overcome the awful obstacles that have befallen us, cheerfully blacking boots and running through the streets with pails of ale. People will write books about us. I picture the three of us, our silhouettes embedded in a cameo brooch.
Leonard squinches his eyes at me. “Where did you go just then? You have a distraction problem, don’t you? I have that. Eddy Etchdey. All my parents are always telling me that, and teachers.”
All my parents.
Eddy Etchdey. I smile. Like ADHD has a name. Like ADHD is a little kid, running wild, popping balloons.
“I do have a distraction problem,” I admit. “My m— Anyway, someone I used to know told me I suffered flights of fancy.”
Leonard stares at me. “You weird. Fancy can’t fly. Fancy’s not a bird. Anyway, listen. About Thad. I heard La talking about it on the phone. His stepdad did it. Like, stomped on him. You know.” He slides from the jelly lounger and hops up and down hard, saying Bam! Bam! Bam! He adds in some kicks. Sand flies up, stinging my eyes.
“Stop,” I say, not just because of the sand stinging my eyes, but because of the stinging awfulness of what Leonard has just said. It can’t be true. I try to get the image of that, a parent doing that, out of my head. I swallow hard.
I miss my mother so terribly, and our quiet, kind life together.
Leonard says simply, “Yeah, well, it’s a bad world, you know.” He’s starting to look very sleepy. I wonder how he got to LaLa’s, what his broken-back story is.
He murmurs, “Thaddy says we’re just stories in somebody’s book and every time they turn a page, that’s when new stuff happens. But I think we’re like one of those snow
balls. You know, shake ’em up and everything gets all messed up and the snowflakes cover everything and nothing goes back where it was.”
Is that it? That I’m stuck in a bizarre snow globe of grief now, someone controlling my destiny with just one tiny shake? Leonard sighs on his jelly lounger.
The stars are fading. Pink and orange begin to climb up the horizon. It’s never really occurred to me before that stars are always shining, they don’t “go out” when night ends. You just can’t see them, because of the sun. I feel stupid all of a sudden, that this thought has never occurred to me before. I should have paid more attention in school. Too late now.
Thaddeus comes back and scoops up a sleeping Leonard.
“We should go in,” he says quietly, and takes him inside the house, me following. I head to the room I share with Sarah, and try to sleep, but I can’t. I just keep thinking of the horribleness of what Leonard said, and the horribleness of my mother’s viewing, and what’s going to happen to me, and where I’m going to end up, and my stomach starts clenching, and I start to sweat and panic.
My loneliness is like the black hole Thaddeus was talking about, sucking everything in.
Once, for my mom’s birthday, I begged Cake’s mom to drive me to Tucson to Whole Foods, so I could buy my mom’s favorite coconut shampoo; it was expensive, almost nine dollars a bottle, and Whole Foods was the only place that sold it. I helped Bonita at the daycare for two weeks every afternoon to earn enough money for the shampoo, the frozen Sara Lee cheesecake with strawberries, the candles, and the fancy card with a dancing Chihuahua that we picked out at the Red Store, which is what Cake’s mom called Target. It was a running joke to her. She calls Walmart the Blue Store.
My mom cried when she unwrapped the pink tissue paper. She said, “Tiger, you are the best girl.”
No one is ever going to say that to me again.
I think of the favorite way she liked to fall asleep, when the two of us shared a bed: back against back, “like bookends,” she said. Our spines pressed together, warm and firm.
I always fell asleep right away when the two of us did that.
I remember that for all my wanting a dad, or at least the story of a dad, I never didn’t want her, I never didn’t love her, I never didn’t love the well-oiled, good-looking, and good-smelling machine.
In the top bunk, in a stranger’s home, I’d give anything at this moment to have her back, because I don’t think I can live without her. And I don’t want to.
The black hole glistens. The girl-bug pauses, considering, rubbing her wings thoughtfully.
What you had left to lose is already gone, she whispers.
All my parents, Leonard had said. How many has he had? How many more locked refrigerators and cups of too-warm milk and plates of boiled meat am I going to have before this is all over and I’m…what? Spit out on the sidewalk? Eighteen, with a dented pink suitcase and…nothing?
My brain spins. There are so many things in LaLa’s house. There’s probably aspirin I can swallow. Something sharp I can use.
A kind of bleak quiet settles over me. Something weirdly warm and calm. Like fog over the moors in one of my books.
The girl-bug waits, her wings flickering.
I suddenly understand the girls at Eugene Field who take to razors and broken glass, and even those kids who went a little further.
It’s like Thaddeus said: if I go in the black hole, I’m in forever.
My fingers are trembling so badly, but I manage to text Cake.
I’m not in a good place. I’m freaking out. I’m having thoughts.
Cake answers, OMG, what?
Like bad stuff. The S word. I feel so bad, Cake, I feel so, so, so, so bad.
That’s what Cake and I called it, after what those kids had done two years ago. We were in Davidson Middle School and didn’t know them. They were older and went to Eugene Field.
It happened in quick succession, first the one girl, Tonia, and then two boys, Harvey and Crash. Wrists, hanging, gun.
Cake types, DON’T.
My mom is dead, Cake. I don’t have anyone. They found me a place in Sierra Vista. I leave on Monday.
My phone buzzes. I’m breathing so heavily I start to hiccup, and can’t even say hello to Cake.
Cake says firmly, “You shut your mouth right now about the S word, do you hear me? You’re my best friend, and I fucking love you, and I will not let you die. You have me. And I’m awesome. And we will get through this, somehow. I don’t know exactly how, because we’re just stupid kids, but somehow, we will, okay?” Her voice cracks.
“There’s a boy here, like, our age, and he says I should run away.”
“Hmm. A guy. Well, what the hell does he know! He doesn’t know you. You’re as tender as a baby chick, for God’s sake.”
“I know.” I pause, and hiccup. Just talking to Cake is calming me down. “His stepdad, he beat him, I guess. Broke his back.”
“That’s…that’s not going to happen to you, okay?” But her voice shakes, just the same. We both know it’s uncharted territory, where I’m going.
She says, “And that’s terrible. That’s disgusting. People are shit. How could a person do that to a child?”
“I’m just so tired, Cake.”
“You poor thing. Here, I’ll calm you down, okay?”
I scooch down in the bed and pull the itchy blanket over me, putting the phone next to my head on the pillow. I know what’s coming, and I’m grateful.
Cake is extremely musical. When she was born, her parents took her on the road with them. Everybody thought Rhonda was going to be washed up, that she wouldn’t be able to sing anymore, lugging a baby around, but she proved them wrong. Cake was born and they bundled her up and took her on tour until she was eight years old, when they decided to settle in Mesa Luna, where Rhonda’s brother, Connor, lived. I’ve never been anywhere but Mesa Luna and Tucson, but Cake’s been all over the world.
Britney Spears taught Cake her ABCs, Gwen Stefani taught her to dance, and she went on a massive tour with Billy Joel that ended in Tokyo, where he brought her out onstage and she banged out “Only the Good Die Young” on the piano in front of fifty thousand people. She was seven. Her dad filmed the whole thing from the stage. If you have patience, you can find this performance on YouTube, and it’s hilarious and totally cool at the same time. At one point, Billy just throws up his hands and lets Cake do all the singing, too. Those six minutes? They paid for whatever music school is going to grovel for her when she graduates Eugene Field.
There’s some shuffling, and then Cake starts playing a variation of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” If you haven’t heard that piece played on solo violin, then I urge you to head over to YouTube right now and start listening, because it’s beautiful, and sad, and then happy, and perfect in its own confusing way.
I have no idea if Cake ever messes up notes, or makes noises that shouldn’t be made. I don’t have a musician’s ear, and I bang the drums in Broken Cradle like a toddler on Kool-Aid, and my mom always tells me that’s fine. “Listen with your heart. That’s all that matters.”
You know what best friends do? They know what you need without you having to ask, so when Cake finishes, she just starts again.
And I listen to her play that piece over and over, the music an ocean that washes the bleakness away and rocks me to sleep, far, far away from the black hole.
6 days
THE BUZZING OF MY phone pulls me from a deep sleep. I answer blearily. It’s Karen.
“Be ready tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., bags packed, okay?”
“How long am I going to be there?” I mumble sleepily.
“Anything could happen, and a lot of it depends on you. On your behavior.”
I test her, remembering what Thaddeus said about taking off.
I say, “What if I run awa
y, what happens then?”
She doesn’t even bother to be nice and call me Tiger.
“Grace,” she says, her voice growing steely in a way I don’t like. I’m instantly sorry I said anything. “Don’t think about that. One, I’ve been at this a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of kids with a lot of problems, and please believe me when I say you wouldn’t last a day on the street. Two, you run away? You’ll get picked up in a hot second and thrown into juvie, and everything you’ve seen in movies about juvenile detention? It’s true. And sometimes? Real life is even worse than the movies. You’re sixteen years old. You have two years until you’re legally responsible for yourself. Keep your head down, get better grades, and take care of yourself, and someday you and your friend Butter can rent an apartment together like Laverne and Shirley. Okay?”
“Her name is Cake,” I answer meekly. “And I don’t know who Laverne and Shirley are.”
“They were best friends on a TV show when I was a kid and they had their own apartment and twin beds and Laverne drank milk and Pepsi mixed together and all her clothes had a giant cursive L on them, which I absolutely adored, and Shirley had a boyfriend named the Big Ragu and I wanted to be just like them when I grew up. Be ready at 8 a.m. I’m very cranky in the morning and I don’t like to wait for people.” She clicks off.
Down the hall, I can hear them in the kitchen. Silverware clinking. Laughter.
When I walk in, everyone gets quiet. LaLa dishes out some sort of rice and vegetable concoction. Finally, Leonard sputters, “How long are you going to let her wear that dress, La? It’s starting to smell.”
I look down at the dress. As far as I’m concerned, it’s never coming off. It was the last wish my mother had for me, whether she knew it would be the last one or not, and I’m going to wear this dress as long as I need to. Maybe forever.
LaLa says, “People mourn in their own ways, Leonard.”
I slide into a chair. Thaddeus smiles at me and pushes a plate in my direction.
Leonard chews his rice thoughtfully. “I don’t know what that word, that mourn, means.”
How to Make Friends with the Dark Page 12
