When I Grow Up (Tales from Foster High)

by John Goode

  The alarm clock on the nightstand had gone off, playing some radio station way too loudly. I started to get up to turn it off when I recognized the song. It was “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, the song Brad had sung when he took me to prom. It was just another pop song in the total scope of things—just four minutes of random noise. But to me it was the most incredible expression of love that I had ever heard.

  He was gone.

  I had pushed him away, again. What was wrong with me? Why did I keep doing it? I loved him so much, but somewhere inside, I was so sure he was going to hurt me. At the time I had been convinced he was cheating on me with Colt, but now, looking back….

  Robbie walked out of the bathroom and asked in a panicked voice, “What’s wrong?”

  I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

  “Everything,” I said, breaking down and sobbing. “My mom is going to die, I broke up with Brad, my dad is an extra from Breaking Bad. There is nothing that isn’t wrong.”

  He sat down next to me, and I steadied myself for the eventual pep talk these breakdowns produced.

  “Well, that’s true, everything is wrong,” he said finally.

  Well, that was peppy.

  “Everything does suck right now, and I have no idea how things are going to turn out, but you can’t just give up and you can’t just sit and be miserable. Trust me on this. No ditzy godmother is going to float in and make rodents sew you a dress, you can’t lie in the middle of the forest and wait for someone to kiss your boo-boo and make it better, and you can’t marry a man you just met.”

  I gave him a confused look.

  “Sorry, was on a Disney roll and had to toss it in, but the rest of it is true. You can’t give up. This is when real heroes dig in and stand their ground.”

  “I’m not a hero.” I sounded miserable.

  “My ass you’re not. Kyle, if there were pictures of a hero in the dictionary, there would be a picture of Flynn from Tangled ’cause he’s hot and a photo of you because you are the only hero I have ever met. Look at what you did to this town. How can you say you are anything but?”

  “What did that do for my mom? And I still have a dick dad,” I replied.

  “I said you were a hero, not an all-powerful god who can stop car crashes or go back in time and rewrite things. Heroes don’t fix everything all the time. That’s why there’s WD-40 and duct tape. Heroes don’t back down when it looks hopeless. Hopeless is when they get geared up.”

  “You’re telling me to go get dressed, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I am, in an inspirational and emotional way that will help bolster your spirits.”

  I sighed and stood up. “You could have said ‘Hey, Kyle! Get dressed!’”

  “I could have, but it wouldn’t change the fact you’re a hero.”

  I paused at the bathroom door and gave him a smile. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said cryptically. “I have a feeling this day is going to be full of surprises.”

  That got my spider sense tingling. “Where’s Sebastian?”

  He gave me a Cheshire Cat grin. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  Robbie

  SO WHILE Sir Grump-a-lot was in the shower, I called Sebastian to see where in fuck’s name they were. Imagine my surprise when Brad answered the phone.

  “Sebastian’s phone.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Siri must have dialed the wrong moose,” I said dryly.

  “Ha-ha,” he responded, even more dryly. “He was knocked out after flying across the country twice in the same day, so I took over driving.”

  “Where are you guys?”

  “About an hour away. Matt’s jeep had a water pump thing so we had to pull over and fix it.”

  “Ugh. Men and cars, I swear.”

  “You do know we didn’t cause the car to break down just so we could fix it, right?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. Partly, of course, because I’d been about to accuse him and the other two of doing just that. “Just hurry and get here.” I listened to the music in the background and hoped neither Brad nor Sebastian suspected me.

  “I told Sebastian this, but I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Imagine my surprise. Well, I do, so get your doubting butt in gear and get here!”

  He muttered, “Wow, someone got up on the wrong side of the broom today.”

  “You know I can hear you, right?”

  “You know I don’t care, right?”

  “Drive. Faster. Now,” I ordered and hung up.

  The bathroom door cracked open, and I saw Kyle peek out just far enough to spot me with his left eye. “Who are you yelling at?”

  “Judge Judy; the woman is a moron.”

  He paused and opened the door a bit to stare disbelievingly at me. “You do know the TV isn’t on.”

  “I don’t need a TV to tell me that old woman is insane. Change, now!”

  He slammed the door, and I took a deep breath.

  And this was why I hated Foster.

  Troy

  SO YEAH, this town sucked.

  I know I’d only been there a couple of days and you shouldn’t be judging books by their covers, which is a bullshit saying. What else could you judge it by if you’d never read the book? Its sparkling personality? I didn’t like this town, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t sweet on me either. Either that or everyone here learned manners on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall and believed everyone not born and raised here was a spy.

  If what I just said shocked you because you didn’t think I would be able to pull up a Cold War analogy, then fuck you because you’re as bad as this town.

  I know what I look like. I know what my dad looks like, and I know what the Brady Bunch looks like. So I get we didn’t fit in here, but for fuck’s sake, people! Could you at least not watch me like we were going to steal the nearest church’s silver stuff?

  Maybe the reason we were there was making them all hostile toward us. I mean, it wasn’t like we were the good guys here.

  My dad had been pulled over crossing the border in Laredo and had to dump about a kilo of coke or get caught with it. Now, for those of you not in the know, let me break it down for you. On the border that kind of powder would go for around twenty-five grand wholesale. That means before it was cut and other stuff is added to it to dilute its potency and then marked up, the best price you could hope for was maybe twenty grand, if you knew someone.

  Once that was cut with something else, like baby powder or something, the value could double easily. So my dad didn’t just owe them the twenty-five grand; they were going to want the street value of it. And I can assure you, that was money my dad didn’t have.

  So now the Vasquez brothers wanted to know where their coke was. The answer they did not want to hear was that it was killing fish in the Rio Grande. Worse, most of that coke was already sold before my dad ejected it out of the car, so he didn’t owe them the wholesale cost of the coke. He owed them the street value plus.

  Plus whatever value they wanted to add not to break both his legs.

  To tell the truth, breaking his legs would have been nice, because this wasn’t the first time my dad had come up short for them. Now you might be saying, “Troy, you sound rather calm for someone discussing the possible murder of your father.”

  If you are, you’re right.

  This wasn’t the first time or the fifth time we’d been in this situation. I suppose I’d grown a little numb to my father’s impending doom. He was a survivor, and it was an odd form of reality television for me to watch him get out of these jams. I was growing a little concerned, though, because I suspected the Vasquez brothers had figured out where we were. My dad took off across Texas once he was clear of customs; I wasn’t sure he had a destination in mind before the call from the hospital came in.

  I didn’t know this lady, but she had some shitty luck, let me tell you.

  The hospital had
my dad still listed as her husband, so when she was brought in, they did a search for a way to contact my dad and somehow came up with his cell phone. Next thing I knew we were squatting in her hospital room while my dad plotted his next move. I expected him to get her house keys and take anything he could pawn to raise some cash, but it turned out that his other son, Kyle, had come into some money, so he started scheming.

  So yeah, hard to figure why the local population hadn’t warmed to us yet.

  I was watching Supernatural on TNT when the nurse came in. She and those other nurses had been giving us the stink eye for days, but so far she hadn’t been able to kick us out. Something about spending as much time as possible with the dying family member. Leave it to my dad to figure out a way to outsmart the rules. I thought this was just the ordinary change-of-shift checkup, but instead she stared straight at my dad. “Mr. Childs would like to see you up in his office.”

  Again? What was going on now?

  He got up and I followed, but he shook his head. “Stay here.”

  If you’re curious, it was the same way he’d tell a dog to stay.

  He walked out and I waited. The next commercial break, I made my way upstairs to Childs’s office. When I got there, I could hear my dad’s voice coming from a recording, and I knew I’d been right about Kyle after all. When he came in yesterday ready to deal, I knew something was up. The questions he was asking were so simple, they had to be a trap. And sure enough, they were.

  “I give you money and you let them operate on my mom?” Kyle’s voice asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah. That’s the deal.”

  “Even though you know she could suffer from brain damage without it?”

  “Look, punk, I could care less about you or your mother, so if you came in here to guilt me, you’re wasting your time. I want fifty thousand dollars, or I sit here until she drools.”

  Kyle’s voice came next. “Let them operate and then I’ll pay.”

  My dad’s laugh was as malicious as it was damning. “Don’t con a con man. That operation is the only leverage I have. No money, no deal.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  “Better think fast. She isn’t as young as she used to be.”

  Kyle sounded pissed. “You see, Mr. Childs, I told you he was here to extort money from me.”

  “You have an explanation for this, Mr. Stilleno?” Childs asked my dad.

  “I didn’t know I was being recorded,” my dad started with, which was not the best comeback.

  “This isn’t a court of law,” Childs responded coolly. “I don’t care about the legality of the recording. I’m more interested in whether you dispute it.”

  No one spoke, and I could imagine my dad glaring at Kyle. “Okay, yes, I did say that. But you have to understand why.”

  “Go on,” Childs prompted him.

  This should be good.

  “It’s my son. He’s gotten himself in trouble.”

  I felt my blood turn to ice.

  “He has a drug problem, and he owes some men money. I know I’m trying to get money out of you, but I’m trying to save my son’s life.” His voice was so distraught, I would have bought it if he hadn’t been talking about me. “I know it’s wrong, but I’m just a father trying to do the best by his son.”

  I was so glad no one was looking at me because I probably looked like the biggest idiot alive. My jaw dropped until my mouth hung open like a freshly caught trout.

  “You have kids, Mr. Childs. You know the things you’ll do to save them. I’ve tried to get him off it, but he messed around with the wrong people, and I’m afraid for his life.”

  “I see,” Childs said, and I knew my dad had done it again.

  I didn’t want to hear anything else, so I went back to the ICU and tried to figure out what to do next. So, worse than everyone thinking I’m a hood, they’re going to think I’m a druggie hood. The ironic part is that I didn’t even drink. If you grew up around that shit, you fostered an aversion to it that never really went away. Most kids looked at booze and drugs as forbidden fruit; I saw it as part of the family business I didn’t want to get into.

  About fifteen minutes later my dad came back. I could tell he was proud.

  “So what happened?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Fucking faggot tried to set me up,” he growled, pulling his cell out. “Showed him who was boss.”

  Yeah, by throwing me under the bus.

  “So then everything is okay?”

  He shook his head. “He said he was going to call their lawyers and see what the deal was, but I’m willing to bet they aren’t gonna do a thing. He’s gonna pay.”

  I said nothing.

  “Go get lost; I need to make a call,” he ordered.

  “So? Make the damn call, what do I care?”

  He crossed the room and grabbed my shoulder hard. “Did I ask if you fucking care? Go get a Coke, go downstairs and smoke, do anything but be here.”

  I pulled away and moved back toward the bed. “You really wanna get caught roughing your poor, pathetic son up?” I asked him. “That won’t help your case any.”

  He paused because he knew I was right: this all hinged on him looking like the not-so-bad guy, which meant me going along with him. “Get out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  We both knew he wasn’t a physical threat to me, but I still walked out because I’d been conditioned to do so. I was a trained dog with nowhere else to go, so what choice did I have but beg for table scraps? I walked away from the room and waited about a minute before going back. I pressed my ear tight against the door, near the hinges so it wouldn’t accidentally open. I could barely make out my dad’s voice.

  “—tter of time. Look, Carlos, I can get you your money,” he pleaded.

  Silence, which was probably Carlos screaming at him that he was out of time.

  “I can pay you more than what the junk was worth, I promise.”

  I could just imagine Carlos tearing him a new asshole.

  “This won’t be like Chicago. That was a mistake.”

  Chicago was when my dad got fronted some crank for a weekend and then skipped town when Carlos tried to get paid. They got that settled, but I could guess Carlos was telling my dad no because he would just run again.

  “Look, I can prove it. What if I give you some collateral?”

  Pause.

  “Tell your guys that if I don’t have the money when they get here, they can hold my kid as promise I’ll get the money.”

  My blood turned to ice water.

  “You know I won’t let anything happen to the kid! What kind of guy you think I am?”

  The kind of guy who would let a drug dealer hold his son as a promissory note.

  “Just one more chance, please, Carlos.”

  I didn’t hear anything after that because all I could hear was the pounding of my heart. He’d just said that. He really just bargained me away like I was a poker chip. My first instinct was to run, but where? With what? I was as fucked as my dad—well, worse, because I couldn’t offer him up as a down payment on a debt.

  Kyle

  ROBBIE AND I paced the waiting room waiting for Mr. Childs to make his decision.

  “He blamed the kid?” Robbie asked for like the fifth time.

  “Of course he did,” I said, scowling. “What else was he going to do?”

  “I don’t know, be a man,” Robbie muttered as Tyler walked in.

  “What did I miss?” he asked.

  “Encyclopedia Brown here confronted the crack addict, and the hospital official needs to think about it,” Robbie said sighing.

  “What does he need to think about?” Tyler almost shouted.

  “Mr. Parker,” Childs said, coming in from another door. “Do I have to eject you from here again?”

  It was slightly amusing to watch Tyler go from grown-up jock to looking like a kid being scolded by the principal. “No, sir.”

  “Mr. Stilleno, this way,” he said
, gesturing toward the ICU. I followed him in as he asked the nurse to get Billy.

  Billy came out looking pissed. “Well?” he asked Childs.

  “Before I say anything, I need both of you to promise me there will be no yelling. This is a hospital, and I am this close to throwing both of you out.”

  I nodded and saw Billy do the same.

  “I talked to our lawyers and they advised that, to protect us from possible litigation, we don’t do anything at this time.”

  It took both of us a second to comprehend his words.

  “That means I win?” Billy asked.

  “You’re fucking kidding me!” I said at the same time.

  “Kyle,” Childs said, looking guilty. “If he sues us, it is going to be a jury trial, and our lawyer assured me even though his actions are deplorable, his motivation of saving his son would be enough to sway certain jurors. If that happens, it could cost this facility far too much money.”

  “So how much money is my mom’s life worth?” I demanded.

  Childs looked like he was going to hurl.

  Robbie pulled me back, and I was about to go with him when Billy had to open his mouth. “You know the price. The question is, how much is your mom’s life worth to you?”

  And that was it.

  I turned around and threw myself at Billy. He wasn’t ready for me because I hit his stomach and we both crashed to the floor. His confusion didn’t last for long, because he slammed both fists into my back as we rolled around. This wasn’t going to be like with Tony Wright where being in an actual fight was an alien concept. I could tell Billy had been in more than a few scraps from the way he moved to protect his balls while whaling on me.

  Childs was yelling, Robbie screamed something, and then I was picked up like a rag doll.

  Tyler pulled me off him and then kind of tossed me back to get me out of the way. Billy scrambled to his feet, and a wicked grin spread across Tyler’s face. “Come on, Billy. I told you this was going to happen. Why don’t you pull the same stunt you did last night?”