by Dan Wingreen
“And that’s why I really think you should give this Big Brother thing a shot.”
“So I can be ignored by someone outside my age range for once?”
Spencer had to fight not to roll his eyes. “So you can talk to someone who doesn’t have any preconceived ideas about who you are. Wouldn’t you like that? Just hanging out with someone who doesn’t know anything about you? Who hasn’t spent an entire school career slotting you into a box in their stupid cliquey hierarchy?”
Spencer would have killed for something similar when he was Connor’s age. Even now he couldn’t stand when people he barely knew tried to put him in boxes.
An emotion Spencer couldn’t identify flickered across Connor’s face, and Spencer hoped he was striking some kind of chord with him.
“You don’t do that,” Connor said.
Spencer smiled sadly. “You need more in your life than just me, Con.”
It was one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to say, mostly because he couldn’t help picturing a phantom Cass standing over Connor’s shoulder giving him a knowing smirk.
“You’re the only one who likes me.”
“I’m the only one who knows you. Tell me this, does anyone at school make fun of you? Besides Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I mean.”
Connor frowned. “No?”
“There you go. Kids are mostly awful little shits. If they didn’t like you, you’d know.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Then prove me wrong.” Spencer sat back and crossed his arms. “Go do this Big Brother thing for a week. If the guy hates you, then you never have to go back. I promise.”
“Is that supposed to be a bribe?”
Spencer hesitated. I’m probably about to set a really bad precedent here, but… “You know what? Sure, why the hell not. It’s a bribe.”
Connor stared at him incredulously. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. But don’t get too excited, this is a one-time thing because I really think this will be good for you, and I don’t want to force you.”
“I…” Connor chewed his lip. “That’s…not a very good bribe, then?”
Spencer smiled. “So, make me an offer.”
Connor glanced away again but not before Spencer saw the calculating glint in his eye.
I have you now.
“Okay. If I go…you have to get me my own PlayStation 4,” he said, shooting Spencer a challenging stare and obviously expecting him to back down.
Oh, kid, you sell yourself so low. You could have held out for a dog.
Not that he’d be giving in so easily. He might be setting a shitty precedent, but he wasn’t going to set it without at least trying to teach the kid something useful.
“How about I let you take the PS4 we already have out of the living room and keep it in your room?”
Connor blinked. “You’re really gonna pay me to do this?”
“I don’t lie to you. I said I would, so that’s what I’m gonna do. Besides, we’ve already started negotiations, it’s too late to back out now. You made your offer, and I made my counteroffer; now it’s your turn. You either accept the counteroffer or try to see if you can get more out of me. But—” Spencer held up one finger. “—don’t ask for anything worth more than your original offer. It’ll make you look like you have no idea what you’re doing, and if I don’t respect you as an equal negotiating partner, I’ll do my best to screw you over.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Basic bartering. If we’re doing this, we’re making it as educational as possible.”
“But…people don’t barter anymore.”
“You’d be surprised,” Spencer said, thinking of the few times he’d tried to sell things on Craigslist. “Now, do you accept my counteroffer, or do you have one of your own?”
The poor kid seemed utterly confused. Any other time Spencer would have been merciless—no one ever learned anything from an easy lesson—but today was a panic attack day. Not even Spencer was heartless enough to push hard on one of those.
“So, a hint? I would have been willing to go a lot higher than a new PS4, which means I’m already coming out ahead on this deal. I’d be willing to accept literally anything legal that’s equal to or under the price of a brand-new console.”
Connor frowned again. “How much would you have given me?”
“That would be telling.” And I’m really hoping you’ve forgotten about wanting a dog. “Counteroffer?”
Connor opened his mouth, then slowly closed it. Spencer was very pleased to note the kid actually seemed to be thinking about his response.
“Um. Could I take the PS4 into my room and get a new TV?”
Not exactly a confident offer, but they could work on confidence some other time.
“How big?”
“Forty inches?”
Spencer thought about it. He could probably find a cheap forty-inch TV online for about three hundred dollars, but he knew the electronics trade-in store three blocks away had a better selection of bigger ones that were put together much better than anything he could find for such a low price at a different retailer.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll get you a bigger one that might even have a chance at being name brand if you let me take your old one to trade in down at Electronics World.”
“And I still get the PS4?”
“And you still get the PS4.”
It wasn’t like Spencer didn’t have five other game systems hooked up in the living room to play. Honestly, he should have let the kid game in the privacy of his own room years ago.
“Deal!” Connor shouted, practically tripping over himself to get the word out. Spencer bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.
“Deal,” he said solemnly.
They shook hands across the table.
Chapter Four
The Michael Crichton Memorial Youth Center was very different from the centers Tim was used to. The building itself was laid out more like a rec hall than the more familiar, slightly run-down, one-floor school design. The reception area was spacious and inviting, the receptionist was professional and didn’t smell like menthols, and there was even an indoor gymnasium complete with basketball and tennis courts. The facility was very impressive, but there was a vitality to the place that made Tim uncomfortable. He’d gotten accustomed to the air of neglect and the painfully obvious need for more money that clung to taxpayer-funded youth centers. Those centers needed volunteers, people who would stand as a crumbling seawall against the tsunami of gang culture and poverty that ruined the lives of so many good kids who desperately needed positive adult role models.
He didn’t like to think of himself as the kind of person who would rank children based on how well-off they were, but it was hard for him to imagine the kids who would go to this kind of center truly needing him. The few he saw wandering around appeared clean and well-fed with properly fitting clothes; nothing like his last group of kids. A sharp disdainful voice inside him questioned whether these children—though most of them seemed to be teenagers, another difference Tim hadn’t been expecting—even deserved a center like this. Surely their parents could afford babysitters if they didn’t want to actually take care of their own spawn.
If his inner voice had sounded even a little less like Rudy, he might have actually listened to it. Instead, he marched up to the receptionist, asked about volunteering, and was immediately whisked off to a small office for the strangest intake interview of his life.
Richard Baker—“Call me Dick, please”—the co-director of the center was a walking contradiction. He was tall and wiry, with flinty-gray eyes, a stern, heavily lined face, and thinning black hair combed severely back off his forehead. He sat straight-backed and stiff, exuding an air of confident authority Tim had rarely seen in civil servants. Tim’s first impression of Dick was that he looked like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds had a kid who grew up to be a drill sergeant.
He was also the most gen
ial and open person Tim had ever met, greeting him with a wide smile and a manly shoulder clap like they were old war buddies before inviting him to have a seat in one of the two chairs in front of his desk. Dick sat next to him, abandoning the comfortable-looking desk chair he’d been using when Tim came in, and proceeded to tell him what seemed to be his entire life story. By the time he stopped talking, Tim knew the names of his parents and extended family, what they all did for a living, what they thought of Dick’s job as co-director of a youth center, that Dick had been divorced for five years and he had a son slightly younger than Tim who was away at college in California. He’d also been hit up for donations to the center five different times. Tim felt like he’d been through a hurricane; not even his mom talked as much as Dick.
“Well,” Dick said after nearly an hour of one-sided conversation, “now that the pleasantries are out of the way, what can I do you for?”
Pleasantries? Dear Lord. And “what can I do you for?” People actually say that?
Tim shook himself. “Um. I’d like to volunteer?”
“You sure about that?” Dick asked. He raised an eyebrow before laughing loudly and slapping his own leg. Tim had absolutely no idea how to react. “All right then. I guess I should start with asking about your qualifications.”
Now Tim felt even more off balance. He’d volunteered at a bunch of youth centers over the years, and this was the first time anyone had asked him about qualifications. Usually they just ran his name through a database to make sure he wasn’t on a sex offender’s list. They were all pretty desperate for volunteers though. Maybe privately funded places could be pickier?
Tim really hoped he wasn’t about to be turned away. He needed this.
“Oh, okay. Uh. I’ve volunteered at a bunch of youth centers before. Public ones. Most recently Heart of Youth across the city. And I have a BA in Psychology from CSU and…” Tim started to sweat under his collar. He hadn’t prepared at all for this. After everything that happened with Rudy and Professor Inappropriate, he needed something that relaxed him. He needed to be helping people, not defending his ability to help. I don’t think I can do this. What if he asks who my teachers were? What if he calls for references? What are the odds that he won’t call Professor Carmichael? What if that bastard ruins this for me too?
Tim cleared his throat, desperately hoping his voice wasn’t about to crack. “I guess that’s it, really. Um. I babysat for some of the parents in my building when I was a teenager, too, if that counts…”
Tim closed his eyes. There was no way he wasn’t about to be thrown out.
“Wow. A Psychology BA from CSU, huh? That means you must have studied under Professor Carmichael, right?”
Of course he knows Professor Asshole by name. Why wouldn’t he?
“Yeah,” Tim said quietly.
“Hm.” Dick didn’t say anything for a long moment. Tim refused to look at his face. He had enough experience with expressive hms to know Dick wasn’t exactly pleased with his answer. “Are you going into his grad program?”
Tim flinched. “No.”
“Good.”
Tim finally opened his eyes, more than a little surprised by Dick’s blunt statement. Dick’s smile held a trace of sympathy.
“Never met one of his grad students that I liked,” Dick said, answering the question Tim hadn’t quite dared to ask. The almost knowing glint in his eyes, though, had Tim suspecting there was more to his seemingly benign statement.
Maybe he knows how he picks his grad students.
“So,” Dick said, easily changing the subject. “What are you planning on doing with your degree? Going into another grad program? Or do you already have a job?”
“I…” He probably should have expected someone besides his mom to ask these questions, but for some reason, he hadn’t. Well. Okay. Not for some reason. He didn’t think anyone would actually care. The people in his life rarely did. Even Sarah, his boss at the bakery, never really asked about his career plans, and she was practically his only friend in the city. “I’m not…I have a job. Not in psychology though. I…work in a bakery.”
He wondered if he’d ever be able to say that out loud without feeling like a total failure.
“A bakery, huh?” Dick asked. And here it comes. The air of confusion, the judgment, and the assumption I couldn’t handle pursuing a real career. “Do you get an employee discount?”
Tim blinked. Out of everything he expected Dick to say, that wasn’t even on the list.
“Yes,” he answered hesitantly.
“Does it extend to family and friends?”
“It can…”
Dick grinned. “When do you want to start?”
Tim blinked again. “What?”
“Well, that might be a bit premature, I guess. Gotta run your name, make sure you’re not here to feel up the kiddies.” He fixed Tim with a hard glare. After the last hour or so, it actually seemed out of place on his craggy, unforgiving face. “You’re not, are you?”
“No!”
The grin returned. “Then we shouldn’t have any problems aside from what you wanna do around here and when you wanna do it. So, what were you thinking?”
Tim had no idea what to say. Was this really it? The whole interview?
“It’s okay if you don’t know exactly what you want to do right now,” Dick said. “Lots of volunteers don’t. Though, I will warn you, there are probably going to be a lot of bakery field trips in your future no matter what you end up doing. With me if nothing else.”
“Field trips?”
If anyone had even suggested taking kids out of the last center he volunteered at, they would have had the cops called on them. The idea of field trips was completely foreign to Tim.
“One of the reasons why we vet our volunteers. Private organization means we get to make our own rules, to a degree, and I’ve never thought keeping kids cooped up in a center is the best way to help them.”
“And their parents are okay with that?”
“Of course. That’s what permission slips are for.”
“But…” Tim had no idea why he kept asking questions. It sounded like he wouldn’t be thrown out after all, but this whole setup was so new and confusing to him he couldn’t help himself. “You didn’t vet me though.”
“I’m a good judge of character.” Tim stared at him in disbelief. Dick met his gaze evenly. “You sat there and listened to me go on about things you couldn’t possibly care about for almost an hour, never interrupted, never let on you were bored. You’re polite, you’re sensitive, and to be honest, you’re easily the most qualified volunteer I’ve ever interviewed.”
“I…only have a BA…”
“We have a woman here with half a high-school education who abandoned her own family because she couldn’t handle being a mother. The only reason she volunteers is to try and ease her guilt. She’s also one of the best volunteers we’ve ever had. School certificates aren’t everything.”
Once again, Tim was at a loss for words.
“The only thing I care about is what’s best for the kids,” Dick continued. “We’re going to do a background check before you get within shouting distance of any of them, but we wouldn’t even bother with that if I didn’t think you’d be good for them.”
Tim hated the way his eyes started to water at Dick’s words. He used to be so confident in himself, in his dreams, and his ability to accomplish them. The Tim of a year ago never would have felt this pathetically grateful because a man he’d just met thought he would be a good influence on children. That Tim hadn’t been ground down to almost nothing by his relationship with Rudy or months of emotional manipulation from a man who had been his mentor. That Tim had been a rubber band, able to snap back into shape no matter how much life had stretched or contorted him.
The Tim of today felt like a thousand-year-old piece of parchment. A rough tap would be all it took to send him crumbling to dust.
“So,” Dick said. “Any ideas on where you’d lik
e to spend your time? Or do you wanna table the talk and hit the cafeteria for some late lunch? We don’t have a bakery, but we should be able to scrounge up some pretty mean mac and cheese.”
Tim choked out a laugh. “I’m not really hungry.” More lies. Tim’s stomach had groaned at least a dozen times while Dick had been speaking. He’d been so nervous about coming here that he hadn’t been able to eat anything all day. “I do have ideas though. Um. I used to spend a lot of time with the younger kids. Around six or seven. I’d really like to stay with them. I think I’m probably best with that age group.”
“Everyone always wants the young ones,” Dick said, his expression radiating sympathy. “Truth is, we don’t get many of the young ones here. Most of our kids are between twelve and seventeen, and we already have too many volunteers focusing on our younger kids…”
Tim’s heart fell. “Oh.”
“Is that gonna be a deal breaker?” Dick asked. “I know teenagers are tough, especially ones that find their way to centers like this. If you don’t think you can handle it, I wouldn’t blame you.”
Even if Tim hadn’t spent the last four years of his life studying psychology, Dick’s attempt at manipulation would have been obvious. Considering everything that went on with Professor Carmichael and Rudy, it should have pissed him off, but for some reason Tim wasn’t bothered. Maybe it was because the professor and Rudy had always manipulated Tim for their own gain while Dick seemed to be pushing him, daring him to step outside his comfort zone. It had been so long since Tim had been given a challenge that wasn’t about making him reliant on his professor or turning him into a clone of his boyfriend. It was…refreshing, in a way Tim never would have expected. Even the implication of someone believing in him was enough for a tiny spark of drive and ambition to flare to life in his chest.
“I…can handle it.”
“Great!” Dick grinned once again. “Then you’re gonna fit in perfectly here.”
To his surprise, Tim found himself smiling in return. “You know what? I think so too.”
