The Last Chance Texaco

by Brent Hartinger

  "Gag you," I said. But when I took a good look at him at last, I saw the bruise around his eye. It had been over a week since I'd hit him, but it hadn't healed at all. It was this bizarre bluish-purple color, almost like it was paint, and it snaked all the way up to the bridge of his nose.

  "Does it hurt?" I said. Suddenly, I really wanted to know.

  "No," he said. "But it did at first. It hurt like hell."

  "Oh." I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to say to that.

  He started to turn away.

  "Hold it," I said.

  He turned and glared at me. Nate Brandon was a prick, but he didn't look as stupid as I'd thought. It was all in the eyes. He didn't seem quite as cocky as I remembered either. Maybe I'd humbled him a little. He was still way too pretty, even with a black eye and a scowl. But for some reason, with that garbage sack and that shiner, he almost looked like a human being.

  I held the Happy Meal box out toward him. "Here," I said. I wasn't sure why I was giving it to him. It just seemed like the thing to do.

  "What?" he said. He looked confused.

  I kept holding it out. "Go on. Take it."

  "What's wrong with it?" Now he looked suspicious.

  "Nothing's wrong with it. I'm giving it to you. You saw it first."

  Slowly, he took it from me. He was still staring at me, but before he could say anything else, I turned and walked away

  • • •

  The second I kicked open the front door that night, I knew something was up. Remember that group home sixth sense I mentioned earlier? I could tell there was tension in the air, a prickle of electricity. I hadn't been at Kindle Home two weeks yet, but I'd never known it to be this quiet at four o'clock in the afternoon. Standing in the foyer, I looked over at the office and saw the door was closed. I also heard the soft murmur of voices from behind the door. This wasn't weird--Emil could have been having a session with one of the kids. So why did that door, and those voices, give me such a funny feeling?

  A second later, Ben stepped through the open front door behind me.

  "Hi, Honey, I'm home," he said, but quietly, not calling out like usual. I looked back at him and he didn't smile, which was an event in itself. I guess he'd also sensed that something was up.

  I stepped into the living room, where Juan, Eddy, and Melanie were watching television. They all immediately glanced over at me, but no one said anything. It wasn't like I'd never walked into a room at a group home and had people not talk to me. This just seemed like a nervous silence.

  I headed upstairs. On the way, I stopped on the Magic Step and heard the words "like an iceberg, where most of it's completely underwater." It was a woman's voice, but not one I recognized. I didn't listen any longer, because there were too many people at home and I wanted to keep the secret of the Magic Step to myself, for the time being at least.

  I found Yolanda in our bedroom, lying on her bed and playing with some buttons. "What's going on?" I asked her. "Who's down in the office?"

  "God," Yolanda said.

  "What?"

  "Megan Something-or-Other. The program supervisor. You know--God. She's talking to Gina and Mrs. Morgan."

  "So?"

  Damon answered from the open doorway behind me. "So God only comes here when it's bad news."

  I turned to look at him. "What does she do when it's good news?" I asked. "Call on the phone?"

  Damon laughed. "This is a group home. There's never any good news."

  "What is it? What's the bad news?" I was certain he knew.

  "I guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?" He was wearing his MP3 headphones as usual, and he punched the play button. Then--and I know he loved doing this to me as much I'd loved doing it to Nate--he just turned and walked away.

  • • •

  So," Eddy said at dinner that night. "What did God want?" This was an example of one of the few things I actually liked about living in a group home: Someone always said exactly what was on everyone's mind. It's not like in some of these foster homes I'd lived in, where the families go for weeks or months with no one ever saying the most obvious things, like "Anyone ever notice that Dad is a drunken asshole?" or "Everyone knows that Renee is pregnant, right?"

  Gina and Ben exchanged a glance.

  "The legislature just cut our funding again," Gina said, with more than a touch of bitterness in her voice. "Gotta figure out some way to pay for those tax cuts for millionaires. If you guys learn anything at all from your time at Kindle Home, learn to vote Democratic, okay?"

  "Gina," Ben said.

  "Sorry, sorry," Gina said. "Strike that from the record. Everyone forget I said that."

  "So what's gonna happen?" Melanie asked.

  "Nothing at all," Ben said. "They'll reinstate the funding. Or Social Services'll get the money from somewhere else. They always do. Maybe we'll all have to drive down to the capital and testify again. But they're not going to close us down. Okay?"

  No one said anything. I think we all played with our meat loaf at exactly the same time. Even Gina.

  "Come on!" Ben said. "They're not going to close us down! Trust me. Have I ever lied to you guys?"

  "Yeah," Eddy said, spearing a green bean with his fork. "You told us we'd be having a 'good' dinner tonight."

  All the kids laughed except Roberto, who didn't seem to be listening.

  "You wanna cook dinner tomorrow?" Ben said. "Because there's no rule that says--"

  Roberto plopped a spoon into his mashed potatoes. They spattered.

  "Hey!" said Juan, sitting next to him. "Watch it!"

  Most of the kids laughed louder than ever, but Damon, Joy, and I all stopped laughing. I think the three of us knew what was coming next.

  "Roberto," Ben said, "knock it off."

  "What?" he said. "You mean like this?" He packed his potatoes up into a little mound with his hands, then took his spoon and pulled it back like a slingshot. He swatted the top of the mound, and potatoes flew out across the table, just missing Yolanda and spattering against the wall.

  "Roberto!" Ben said. "Stop!"

  "Hey," Roberto said, "you told me to knock it off. Or did you mean like this?" He tipped his whole plate over, onto the floor. It bounced, and food rolled everywhere.

  Like I said before, group home kids could be kind of literal. Especially Roberto, I guess.

  "Roberto!" Ben said, giving him a warning shout. "Don't do this!"

  "What?" Roberto said, sounding like he really didn't understand. "You told me to knock it off! So I'm knocking it off!" He slid the bowl of gravy off the table onto the floor. It figured that Roberto would pull this crap on a night we were having messy food.

  Ben shot up from his chair. Gina and Mrs. Morgan stood up too. "Roberto, I'm telling you one last time! Stop this now!"

  "Fuck you," he said, and he stood up to tip over the table.

  All three counselors moved for him at the same time. Roberto was quick, but they were quicker. Ben jerked him back away from the table, and the three counselors all wrestled him to the ground. That's when I knew that Ben always sat no more than two seats away from Roberto on purpose.

  "You told me to knock it off!" Roberto was yelling. "You told me to knock it off!"

  My very first Kindle Home meltdown.

  "It's okay," Ben said to Roberto again and again. "Everything's going to be okay."

  Eventually, Ben got him calmed down enough to lead him out of the dining room and into the office. The idea was to get the disruptive kid away from the rest of us as fast as possible, to keep him from being the center of attention, but also to stop a chain reaction.

  There was no chain reaction that night. Maybe it was because we were all tired and hungry. Or maybe meltdowns were even more common in Kindle Home than they were in the other group homes I'd lived in, and everyone was just used to them.

  "Pass the freakin' mashed potatoes," Melanie said, and Gina, Mrs. Morgan, and the rest of us kids went on with dinner as if nothing had happened a
t all.

  • • •

  The following Monday after school--two days before we got out for Thanksgiving break--I was picking up trash, and I rounded a corner and found myself face-to-face with Nate Brandon. He was looking right at me, almost like he'd been waiting.

  "You tried under the bleachers?" he said.

  "Huh?" I said.

  "Out at the track. There's always lots of trash under the bleachers."

  "Oh."

  "And there was a cross-country meet yesterday. Should be a whole lot of stuff."

  "Oh." I hesitated, wondering if he was setting me up. But for what? "Then how come you're not down there?"

  He shrugged. "Don't have any more room." But when I looked at his bag, I saw that it was still only half full.

  "Come on," he said. "I'll show you."

  I thought about this. Did he have a group of goons down there waiting to jump me? But he had to know that if we got in another fight, he'd get punished too, no matter who started it. Leon would make sure of that.

  I nodded once, then let Nate lead me there. Neither of us said a single word.

  Out at the track field, he led me under the bleachers. He was right. It was a garbage gold mine. Lots of uncrushed aluminum cans too, which were light but took up a good amount of space.

  "See?" he said.

  "Yeah." Why was he being so nice to me all of a sudden? Was this his way of thanking me for giving him the Happy Meal box?

  He started to leave.

  "Wait," I said.

  He looked back at me.

  "There's enough here for both of us," I said.

  He looked at me for a second. I had no idea what he was thinking. Then he stepped farther in, bent down, and started scooping up garbage.

  We worked in silence for a few minutes.

  "This completely sucks," he said. I was listening for any little tone of bitterness that said he thought this was all my fault. But I didn't hear it.

  "Yeah," I said.

  Most of the garbage was clustered in the same area, so Nate and I were working together in the same tight space. I could smell his aftershave again, and it gave me a chill.

  "The people sitting here were real pigs," I said.

  "No," Nate said. "Friends of mine."

  "You have your friends leave their trash?"

  He nodded. "You should try it."

  "I don't have any friends. Word got out I live in a group home." I had that little tone of bitterness in my voice now--which was exactly the way I wanted it.

  "Yeah," Nate said. "That Joy's a real bitch. What's that about anyway?"

  It wasn't just Joy, I wanted to say. It was also you and your bronze-goddess girlfriend! But all I said was, "It's a group home thing."

  "Figures. It's whacked."

  I straightened, and almost hit my head on an aluminum support beam. "What have you got against group homes anyway?"

  He reached for a Snapple bottle, tightly wedged under the lowest row of seats. "Forget it."

  "I mean it! What'd we ever do to you?"

  He didn't say anything for a second. Then, softly, he said, "A groupie stabbed my brother a couple of years ago."

  "What?" Truth was, I hadn't expected him to have an answer for me, much less a good one.

  "They got in a fight over this girl. The groupie pulled a knife. My brother still has the limp."

  "Damn," I said. "Sorry."

  "It wasn't your fault."

  "I wasn't apologizing. I was just, you know. Saying I'm sorry it happened."

  "Yeah," he said. "Me too."

  I tried to think of something to say, but everything I thought of sounded like another apology. And living in a group home was sure as hell nothing to be sorry for. Still, it had been pretty cool of Nate to show me his secret garbage stash, and I didn't want him thinking I wasn't grateful.

  "Well," Nate said. "I'm done." I looked at his bag. It really was full this time.

  "Okay," I said. "See you. And thanks."

  "Sure," he said, and left. But the scent of his aftershave lingered. It still gave me a chill, but different than before. Now it was more of a little tingle. It didn't smell quite as rancid either. Now it even smelled kind of good.

  Chapter Seven

  Something was different.

  It was Thursday afternoon--Thanksgiving Day--and everyone had gathered in the Kindle Home dining room for a big dinner with all the trimmings. But something seemed different from most of the other Thanksgivings in my life. It wasn't the table, although it had been fancied up with a white tablecloth, which was actually a bedsheet, and a centerpiece, which was just a basket of hazelnuts from the yard. And it looked like we had all the same food I'd had in years past. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, gravy, peas, cranberry sauce, even those little baby-com things. So what was it that was different?

  "What do you think of the cranberry sauce?" Leon asked me. "And when you answer, keep in mind I made it myself." All four counselors were there, even though at least two of them were supposed to have the afternoon off. For dinner, they'd all put on jackets and ties or dresses and makeup, and Leon had shaved.

  "It's good," I said to him. It was good. It tasted like actual cranberries, not the purplish stuff you get in a can.

  "The secret is the orange peel," Leon said.

  "Orange peel?" Eddy said. "What'd you put in the stuffing--turkey feathers?"

  "More turkey!" Roberto said.

  "'More turkey, please,'" Mrs. Morgan said.

  "Wait your freakin' turn!" Roberto said. "I asked for it first!"

  Everyone laughed, even though we'd all heard Roberto's joke a million times before. I had another bite of turkey myself. It was good. Moist. It might have been the best turkey I'd ever had. But the way the food tasted wasn't what seemed different about the dinner either.

  Things got quiet for a second, and Ben said, "Well, it's Thanksgiving in Kindle Home, and I can't think of any place I'd rather be."

  "Me too," Gina said, smiling at Ben.

  "Same here," Leon said.

  "And me as well," said Mrs. Morgan.

  Was this true? I thought. Were all four counselors here on Thanksgiving because they wanted to be?

  "I can think of a place I'd rather be," Eddy said. "Do they have Thanksgiving at the Playboy Mansion?"

  "Every day's Thanksgiving at the Playboy Mansion!" Roberto said, and everyone laughed again.

  Leon raised his glass. "To Kindle Home."

  "Fork, please!" Mrs. Morgan said to Melanie, who was eating stuffing with her fingers.

  Ben raised his glass. "To Kindle Home! And to everyone who lives here." Gina raised a glass, reached across the table, and clinked it against Ben's.

  The sound of clinking glasses sure got us kids' attention. Suddenly, everyone was raising their glass and clinking it against all the other glasses. We were drinking sparkling cider, and more than a little of it got spilled on the tablecloth, but I noticed that Mrs. Morgan didn't say anything about that.

  "Okay, okay!" Ben said. "Enough with the clinking already."

  "Save room for dessert!" Gina said. "We've got pumpkin pie."

  "I hate pumpkin pie," Joy said.

  "Me too," Leon said. "That's why we made a blackberry pie too."

  And suddenly, I knew what was so different about this Thanksgiving. It wasn't the food. It was a feeling. But it was such a bizarre feeling that I couldn't remember ever feeling it before, at least not for a really long time.

  Thanksgiving at Kindle Home felt comfortable. It felt real. It felt like home.

  • • •

  We may have had pumpkin and blackberry pie after dinner, but our real dessert came later, when all the kids in the house gathered for our meds. Three times a day--morning, afternoon, and evening-- the counselors unlocked the medicine cabinet in the kitchen so they could give us all our pills. Everyone except Melanie had to take something--I took Paxil for anger control and carbamazepine as a mood stabilizer--but no one took exactly the same
thing. So one counselor would hand us our particular pills with a glass of water, then mark us off on a chart inside the cabinet. Then another counselor would stand and watch us actually swallow the pills.

  That night, Yolanda and I were standing out in the foyer waiting our turns in the kitchen when Damon accidentally knocked an expired water-park coupon off the bulletin board.