The Last Chance Texaco

by Brent Hartinger

  "What?" the principal said.

  "Her name is Lucy," Leon said.

  "Oh," said the principal. Then he went on to tell me he had very high expectations for every single one of his students. After that, he spent ten minutes eyeing me and telling me how seriously the school took discipline, especially when it came to drugs and fights. So much for high expectations for every single student, I thought to myself.

  "So," the principal said, finishing up, "do you have any questions, Lisa?"

  I didn't have any questions.

  Out in the hallway, Leon said to me, "He's an asshole."

  "Yeah, well, he's also the principal," I said.

  "You want me to pick you up after school?" he said.

  "No," I said. "I'll figure out the bus."

  Leon left after that. The bookstore was closed, but the receptionist in the principal's office had given me a locker number, so I made my way there. I still didn't have any textbooks, and I didn't have anything to do in the five minutes before my first class. So I just stood there at my locker rearranging the stuff in my backpack. I also thought about that stupid little cabin in the mountains, the one from Heidi. I wasn't an idiot--I knew it wasn't real and that I wouldn't ever actually live anywhere like it. But sometimes it made me feel better just to think about it.

  Suddenly, I noticed this girl staring at me from a couple of lockers over. It wasn't the new-kid stare. It was the group home stare. Classes hadn't even started yet, and somehow word had already gotten out about me. That had to be some kind of record. I figured it was the rich-kid factor.

  "What are you lookin at?" I said to the girl.

  "Nothing," she said, turning away. But as I was watching her, I spotted Joy and Melanie pointing at me from way down the hallway. They were talking to a couple of other kids and laughing. So they were the ones spreading the news about me. Yeah, it was perverse that Joy was from a group home, and here she was trying to single me out for the very same thing. But it was that whole pecking-order thing going on, with Joy trying to establish that she was top-of-the- coop.

  I did my best to turn my back on Joy and Melanie in disgust, but as I did, I bumped into this girl--one of the rich gold-jewelry types with a perfect tan and hair that had been dyed a very expensive red. She smelled like chocolate-flavored bidis.

  Hey!" she said. "Watch it!"

  But I'd jostled her, and the books in her arms spilled to the ground.

  "Oh," I said. "Sorry." I bent down to help her pick up her books, but that seemed to make things worse.

  "Jesus!" she said. "Don't touch me!"

  I hadn't touched her, I'd touched her books, and just barely at that, but I backed off anyway.

  "You okay, Alicia?" said another voice, from a guy with windblown hair and a mouthful of snow-white teeth. He had to be her boyfriend, ordered directly from the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.

  "The groupie deliberately hit my books!" the girl--Alicia--said. So they called us "groupies" at this school too. Couldn't anyone ever think up a more original name? "Grouper," maybe--like the fish?

  "It was an accident," I said to the guy with the hair and the teeth.

  "Well, I think you should apologize," he said.

  I'd already apologized once. Suddenly, it seemed like I was being asked to apologize for living in a damn group home.

  "I already said I was sorry."

  The guy looked at me with a stare that would have frozen antifreeze. "You the new groupie, huh?"

  "Yeah," I said. "So?"

  "So no one wants you here. Why don't you go back where you came from?"

  I can't go back, I wanted to say. That was the thing about living in a group home. There was nowhere for me to go but forward.

  "He took a tiny step closer, just barely noticeable, but suddenly I could smell his aftershave--no doubt something like Domination for Men by Calvin Klein. I'd smelled that scent before.

  "Just stay out of my way," he whispered, black ice for eyes. "You don't want me for an enemy."

  I didn't say anything. I'd long since learned there wasn't anything you could say to a threat. But I wasn't about to look away either.

  "Nate, look at this!" Alicia said to the guy, holding up one of her books. "She bent my To Kill a Mockingbird!"

  He turned to her. "Let's just get out of here," he said, and I watched them go. They were the perfect couple, I thought to myself. Fire and Ice.

  They disappeared into the crowded hallway, but even after they were gone, I heard Alicia say, "What a bitch!" loud enough for everyone all around to hear. It didn't seem possible that my day could get much worse.

  Then I heard little titters of laughter coming from farther down the hallway, even over the commotion of the other students. I didn't need to look to know that it was Joy and Melanie, that they'd seen the whole thing, and that their little plan to get me off on the wrong foot couldn't have gone any better if they'd choreographed it like a music video.

  • • •

  That afternoon, after school, I walked into the living room, where Yolanda was watching television, and I immediately smelled smoke.

  "Yolanda!" I said. "Don't be stupid!"

  "What?" she said, looking up innocently.

  "I can smell the cigarette! Right out in the open like this? You want to get caught again?"

  She lifted her left hand, which had been hidden behind the far armrest on the couch. Sure enough, she was holding a lit cigarette. "Relax," she said, taking a drag. "The only counselor home right now is Mrs. Morgan, and she can't smell a thing."

  "What?"

  "It's true. She was in some accident or something. Ruined her smelling thingies."

  I crossed to the nearest window and opened it up. "Just put it out, okay? Leon or Ben and Gina could walk in here any second. Are you trying to get yourself kicked out of here or what?"

  With a sigh, Yolanda crawled to the massive fireplace, where she tenderly put the precious cigarette out against a brick. Then she slipped the half-smoked cigarette back into the pack in her pocket.

  "What's the big deal about smoking inside, anyway?" I said. "Is it that hard to walk fifteen feet to the front porch?"

  "I like the way it smells," Yolanda said, scooting herself back toward the television again. And suddenly, I wondered if the real reason she was so determined to smoke inside was because her parents were smokers and the smell reminded her of them.

  I said, "Just knock it off, okay? I just got myself a new roommate. I'd like to keep her around for a while."

  Yolanda didn't say anything. But she smiled a little, and I could tell she was flattered that someone was showing concern for her.

  I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I took a seat in one of the chairs in front of the television.

  "So what'd you think of school?" Yolanda asked me.

  "Joy told everyone I live here," I said.

  "Yeah, I know. She just wants to show you who's boss. You just have to let her think she is."

  I thought to myself, If you let someone think they're the boss, that usually means they are the boss! And that just wasn't the way I did things. On the other hand, I was now living at the Last Chance Texaco--the last stop before being sent to Eat-Their-Young Island. Which maybe meant that the way I did things wasn't working all that well.

  Before I could say anything, someone kicked open the front door.

  "Hi, honey, I'm home!"

  Ben.

  I looked at Yolanda with eyes that said, See? I told you so! She pretended to ignore me, just kept watching the television.

  Ben stuck his head into the living room. "Hey."

  "Hey," Yolanda said.

  "Where is everyone?" he asked.

  "I think Gina's upstairs in your room," I said quickly, hoping he'd leave us alone and give the cigarette smoke more of a chance to clear. The house was big and drafty, but the smell was still pretty thick. Fortunately, he took the bait.

  When he was gone, I said to Yolanda, "What the hell is with them?"


  "Ken and Barbie?" she said.

  I nodded. "If I was married, I sure as hell wouldn't live in some run-down old house with a bunch of juvenile delinquents."

  "They can't have kids," said Damon, sauntering in from the dining room with his MP3 headphones on his head and a slice of toast in his hand. I hadn't even known he was downstairs with us.

  Yolanda sat upright, inspecting the top of his bread. "Hey, that's cinnamon toast! How'd you get in the cupboard? It's locked!"

  "What do you mean?" I said to Damon.

  "It's true," he said. "Gina's ovaries are all screwed up."

  "Really?" I said, intrigued. The cold hard truth was that we group home kids lived and died for gossip about the counselors. They knew everything about us, but we hardly knew anything about them. So I loved it whenever I learned something personal or embarrassing about them. One of my happiest memories from Haply House was when someone had discovered that most of the counselors were making less money per hour than one of the kids was making working at Pizza Hut.

  "Really," Damon said. "And that's why they live in a run-down house with a bunch of juvenile delinquents."

  "Because Gina's ovaries are screwed up? What does that have to do with--?"

  "Think about it," he said.

  I did think about it. "What? You mean we're the kids they couldn't have?"

  He shrugged. "Makes sense, don't it?"

  Yolanda sulked because Damon and I were both ignoring her. "I want some cinnamon toast."

  Before I could ask Damon anything else about Ben and Gina, someone kicked open the front door again. I immediately tensed, because somehow I just knew it had to be Joy.

  Of course, she stuck her head in the living room too, and the first thing she said was, "I smell smoke."

  No one said anything, and I noticed that Damon's half-eaten slice of cinnamon toast had mysteriously disappeared.

  Joy stepped closer to Yolanda. "Bad girl!" she said. "Smoking inside again? I think you should be punished. Come on, hand em over. Matches too."

  Without a word, Yolanda slipped the pack of cigarettes from her pocket and passed them up to Joy. So that was her idea of making Joy "think" she was the boss, huh? But Joy knew that none of us would report her to the house counselors, for this or any of the other things she did. Call it the Group Home Code. The way we kids saw it, it was us versus the adults, and no one ever, under any circumstances, squealed to a counselor about anything another kid did. If you did, the punishment was far worse than anything the counselors could dole out--even worse than being sent to Rabbit Island. Once, at Bradley Home, a newbie had ratted out another kid for downloading Internet porn. The rest of the kids in the house had kept him covered in bruises for three weeks, until the counselors had finally been forced to transfer him to another home--where I'd heard kids there had given him a hard time too.

  Adults were always accusing us of not respecting rules, but it was only their rules we didn't respect. We had rules of our own, and we respected them a whole lot.

  Having gotten what she wanted from Yolanda, Joy turned her sights on me. "Have a nice day at school?" she asked innocently.

  My eyes never left the television. "Oh, yeah. Everyone gave me a real warm welcome."

  "It don't have to be like that, you know," Joy said. "Just be nice to me like my friend Yolanda here."

  Suddenly, I felt like I had a starring role in some chicks-in-prison flick. I was all set to start a cellblock riot right then and there. But I heard Ben's footsteps coming down the stairs. So rather than punch Joy in the face, I casually stood up to go close the window again.

  Ben stepped into the doorway of the front room. "Gina's not up there," he said, looking at me. "Did you actually see her?"

  "No," I said. "I just saw the door closed, and I thought I heard her inside." Then, with Ben staring right at me, I sniffed the air twice. Joy was looking at me too, so I knew she saw me do it.

  Ben hesitated, still preoccupied with finding his wife. But some part of him had noticed me smelling the air, just like I hoped. He sniffed too.

  "Hey!" he said. "Who's been smoking inside?"

  "Not me," I said, sitting back down to watch television.

  "Not me!" Damon said.

  "Not me," Yolanda said.

  "Joy?" Ben said, facing her.

  "It wasn't me!" she said.

  Ben sighed. "Come on. Everyone stand for a pat-down. Arms up."

  Ben searched us all, but of course none of us had any cigarettes except Joy--the ones she had just taken from Yolanda. As for Damon, Ben didn't find that slice of half-eaten cinnamon toast on him anywhere.

  "Joy?" Ben said, holding up the lone pack of cigarettes.

  "It wasn't me!" she said.

  "You're the only one with cigarettes." He slipped a finger inside the pack, pulled out the half-smoked one, and felt the tip. "It's still warm."

  "It wasn't me!" Joy repeated, even stamping her feet a little.

  "That's it!" Ben said. "Five points for smoking, five points for lying!" He spun around to go, gesturing with the pack of cigarettes. "And I'm throwing these away! You shouldn't be smoking anyway."

  My plan had worked perfectly. I'd gotten Joy in trouble, but without violating the Group Home Code. I hadn't actually said anything to Ben, so in the eyes of any group home kid, I hadn't squealed on her. This was the plus side of group home kids being so literal-minded.

  But Joy wasn't stupid. She knew exactly what I'd done.

  After Ben was gone, no one said anything for a second. It felt like the moment after you light a fuse, but before whatever you lit blows up.

  Then it blew.

  Joy went berserk, flailing her arms and spewing spit.

  "You fucking bitch!" she shouted at me. "I'll get you for that!"

  Great, I thought. I'd been at Kindle Home for barely forty-eight hours and my list of mortal enemies now included Emil, Fire and Ice, and Joy. And they could all get me in a whole lot of trouble, each in their own special way.

  Even so, it was worth doing what I'd done to Joy, if only to see the idiotic expression on her face.

  • • •

  Speaking of Fire and Ice, I saw them again the next day in my second-period biology class. I'd seen them in class the day before too, when they'd walked in and looked absolutely shocked to see me, like they couldn't believe a groupie would actually be taking biology and not some Science for Boneheads class. Alicia had walked by me first, still reeking of chocolate bidi smoke, and she'd done this snotty press-her-books-tightly-against-her-chest thing, like I was suddenly going to lash out and knock them down again. And when Nate had walked by me, he'd tipped over the avocado sprout on my workstation.

  The next day, he and Alicia walked by me again, and Alicia did the same thing with her books. Then, when Nate walked by me, he pointed to an aquarium full of crabs in the back of the classroom and said to Alicia, "Damn hermit crabs. They don't have any shell of their own, so they have to go around stealing other animals' shells. I bet the other animals wish those hermit crabs would just go back where they came from." He may have sounded like he was talking about crabs, but I was between him and that aquarium, and I and everyone around me knew he was really talking about me, about my living in a group home.

  I'm still not sure what came over me just then. It was partly what Nate had said, and what he and Alicia had said and done the day before. But it was also partly the way Emil had treated me two days earlier, and the way the school principal had been so rude to me, and the fact that for no reason at all, Joy had decided to make my life a living hell. It suddenly seemed like the whole world was out to get me, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

  Whatever the reason, I leaped up from out of my chair and shouted to Nate, "Go to hell!" Then I hauled off and slugged him in the face.

  Chapter Five

  I was up Shit Creek. Hell, I was floating in a shit raft just above the gigantic shit waterfall at the headwaters of Shit Creek.

  "Two days!" the
principal said to me after the biology teacher had hauled me to the principal's office. "You've been at my school exactly two days, and you're already attacking the other students!"

  Nate had been brought to the principal's office too--after I'd hit him, he'd hit me back, and then we'd really started going at it. We'd knocked over a filing cabinet and ripped down a chart that showed the parts of a flower, and it had taken six sophomores and two juniors to finally tear us apart. He'd gotten in a couple of punches but had never really gotten a direct hit on me. Nate, on the other hand, already had the beginning of a very nasty black eye--a perfect match for the black ice of his eyes.