Picture This

by Norah McClintock

  Mrs. Ashdale was standing on the front walk, talking to a cop in uniform. She nodded when she saw me, and the cop she was with turned. Just my luck. It was Officer Firelli. He’d busted me a few times over the years.

  “Hello, Ethan,” he said with a smirk on his face to tell me he remembered me and how messed up I used to be.

  I ignored him.

  “What happened?” I asked Mrs. Ashdale. “Are the kids okay?”

  “They’re fine,” Mrs. Ashdale said. “I sent Meaghan to pick them up from the bus.” Meaghan was my age. She lived down the street. “Someone broke into the house while I was out shopping,” she said.

  “Broke into the house? Did they take anything?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” Mrs. Ashdale said. “I can’t see that anything’s missing. But they made a real mess of the place. It’s going to take forever to get everything put back where it belongs.”

  “Someone broke in and didn’t take anything?” That didn’t make sense. Then, just like that, my heart stopped. “They must have been in the house when you got home. You must have walked in on them.” I could see it—some crack addicts were about to loot the place when they heard a key turn in the front door. “You could have been hurt, Mrs. Ashdale.” And, boy, I would have hated for that to happen. I liked Mrs. Ashdale. She didn’t deserve to have some crack addict attack her.

  “You wouldn’t know anything about what happened here today, would you, Ethan?” Officer Firelli said. He was in his late twenties and a real hardnose. I always had the feeling that he didn’t like me.

  “Me?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head as if he had asked me the easiest math question in the world and I was so dumb I couldn’t even find the answer by counting on my fingers.

  “Come on, Ethan,” he said. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t get that gang of yours to break into Mrs. Girardi’s place when you were living there?”

  I glanced at Mrs. Ashdale. My cheeks were burning. It was true what Officer Firelli had said. At first I’d hated being put in foster care, and I didn’t try to hide it. The second week I was at Mrs. Girardi’s, I got together with the guys I used to hang with. We broke the lock on the back door, tossed the place, took whatever cash we could find along with whatever we could sell, and took off.

  A couple of the neighbors saw us. The only person they recognized was me, and there was no way I was going to give up my friends. But you know what happened? Mrs. Girardi refused to press charges. She just shrugged and said she supposed she and I were going to have to work on getting used to each other. Then she got started cleaning up the place.

  I watched her for a few minutes, and then I pitched in. I felt awful when I saw her pick up a photograph album that had been thrown onto the floor. Some pictures had fallen out and someone had ripped them up. She looked sad as she held up the pieces, but she didn’t say a word, which made me feel worse. Usually when I did something bad, I got yelled at or punished. But not that time. After that, Mrs. Girardi and I got along just fine—until she had her heart attack.

  But I didn’t know if Mrs. Ashdale knew about what had happened, and I didn’t want to tell her. I was too embarrassed. So far I had done everything right at her house. I didn’t want her to think I was still the kind of person I used to be.

  “It’s okay, Ethan,” Mrs. Ashdale said in a quiet voice. “The past is the past, remember?”

  That was what she and Mr. Ashdale had told me when I first came to live with them: the past is the past, and now is now. I’d thought, yeah, right. That’s the kind of stuff adults always say. But saying something is one thing, meaning it is another. When I looked at Mrs. Ashdale standing there on the front walk, I knew she meant it.

  “I had nothing to do with it,” I said to Officer Firelli. “I wasn’t even in town today.”

  “No?” He looked like he didn’t believe me. Worse, he looked like he didn’t want to believe me. “What about your gang? What are they up to?”

  “How would I know?” I said.

  Mrs. Ashdale gave me a warning look. I knew what that meant: keep your cool.

  “I mean, I haven’t seen any of those guys in almost a year,” I said. “I don’t hang out with them anymore.”

  “You sure about that, Ethan?” Officer Firelli said. His tone was so snotty that I wanted to punch him in the face. But I didn’t. Instead I looked—really looked—at Mrs. Ashdale. She looked back at me. She looked deep into my eyes. And she nodded.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “If it’s okay with you”—and even if it wasn’t—“I’m going inside to start cleaning up.”

  Mrs. Ashdale squeezed my arm as I passed her. “I’ll be right in,” she said.

  Mrs. Ashdale hadn’t been kidding. The place was the biggest mess I had ever seen. Every drawer had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Every cupboard had been ransacked. Every bookshelf had been cleaned out. Mattresses, pillows, sheets and blankets had been tossed to the floor. The big calendar on the fridge where Mrs. Ashdale kept track of everyone’s appointments and activities was lying on the kitchen floor.

  “Are you sure nothing is missing?” I asked Mrs. Ashdale when she finally came inside.

  “I guess we’ll find out when we start putting everything back,” she said.

  We got to work. When Meaghan showed up with Alan and Tricia, they helped too. So did Mr. Ashdale when he got home. It took most of the night, but we finally got everything back where it belonged.

  “There’s nothing missing,” Mrs. Ashdale said as she sank down onto the sofa.

  “You must have interrupted them,” I said.

  “Either that or they were looking for something, Anna,” Mr. Ashdale said.

  “Like what?” Mrs. Ashdale said. “We don’t have anything worth stealing, Bill.”

  It was true. The house was okay, and there was always plenty to eat. But the furniture was kind of beat-up, the TV was old, the DVD player one of those cheapies from a discount store and the computer was so ancient it couldn’t even run half the software that we used at the youth center. You’d have to be nuts to think you could find anything worth stealing at the Ashdales’ house.

  At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

  Chapter Four

  I had to force myself to choke down the pizza that Mr. Ashdale had ordered as a treat, to reward Alan and Tricia and me for working so hard to get the house back in order. I couldn’t sleep that night either. I tossed and turned and looked enviously at Alan, who always seemed to fall into a deep sleep the moment his head hit the pillow. I felt terrible about having lied to Mrs. Ashdale.

  When I got put into foster care, my social worker said it would be good for me. She said at the very minimum it would get me away from the kids I used to hang out with, kids who were gang-member wannabes. I was one of those kids too. If you were in a gang, you were part of something. You knew there was always someone who had your back. You were respected. You had a place, which was more than I could say about the dump I used to live in with my father, who, if you ask me, is a total lowlife. He got busted for being part of a car-theft ring, but not an important part, not the brains of the operation. Not even close. He was one of the guys who worked in a chop shop for cash. But he knew what he was doing. He knew those cars were stolen. The prosecutor knew that my dad knew. They tried to make a deal with him—plead guilty and you’ll do a little time. Roll over and tell us everything you know, you’ll get probation. My dad refused. He claimed he had no idea what was going on. So they gave him as much time as they could, and I went to live with Mrs. Girardi. I didn’t want to be there. I hated that I had no say over where I lived. That’s why I got together with my friends and we trashed the place. I wasn’t mad at Mrs. Girardi. Mostly I was angry at my dad. That was the last time I saw all of my old friends together. But it wasn’t the last time I saw any of them.

  A couple of weeks ago, just before the end of school, I went back to Mrs. Girardi’s neighborhood. She’d always
been good to me, and I wanted to see how she was doing. I’m glad that I went too. She was so happy to see me. But it made me sad to think about it now. Mrs. Girardi was in pretty bad shape. She had one of those little tubes that poked up both her nostrils to give her oxygen, and there was a big container of oxygen beside the chair where she was sitting. She had lost a lot of weight, and her skin was a dusty gray color. When I lived with her, she was always bustling around. But when I went to visit her, she didn’t get up even once. I felt sorry for her, and I promised to visit her again.

  Then, on the way back to the Ashdales’ house, I ran into Tilo, one of my old friends. Well, I sort of ran into him.

  Tilo was racing down the street toward me, and no wonder. He was being chased by three guys. I recognized who they were—they were all members of the Nine-Eights, real tough guys who got their name from the address of the high-rise where the original members had lived. They were rivals of the gang I used to hang around with, even though I wasn’t a member. Tilo ran right past me and ducked into an alley. He looked scared. I didn’t even think about what I was doing—I pretended I didn’t know him and, when the Nine-Eights ran by, I stuck out my foot and tripped the first guy. He fell flat on his face. The second guy didn’t react fast enough, and he fell on the first guy. The third guy almost went down—but at the last minute, he jumped over his buddies and spun around to look at me. The fierce look on his face told me that he had changed targets. He didn’t care about Tilo anymore. He wanted me.

  I took off.

  I didn’t look back, but I heard feet pounding the cement behind me.

  I raced for a main street. There would be a lot of people out there. I would be safer—maybe.

  A hand hooked my shoulder. I tried to shake it off. A second hand hooked my other shoulder. Before I knew it, I had been jerked off my feet and was lying on my back on the sidewalk. The guy who had been chasing me threw himself onto me, but I twisted out of his way. He landed on the cement. I tried to get up. He grabbed my leg and pulled me down again. I kicked him with my free foot. I must have made serious contact, because he howled in pain. I scrambled to my feet and starting running again, but with a limp this time. I’d really banged up my knee on that last fall.

  I reached the main street just in time to see a bus lumbering to a stop on the other side of the street. I dashed through traffic to reach it. By then it was pulling away from the curb, and the guy who had been chasing me was stopping cars as he darted across the street to get to me. I hammered on the bus door. The driver finally opened it. I jumped on. The doors swooshed shut, and the bus started to move. The guy who had been chasing me pounded his fists on the door, but the bus had picked up speed. It was too late to stop. I looked out through the glass in the door at his snarling face. He stared back at me and held up his hand, making a gesture as if he were shooting me. I dropped a ticket into the fare box and found a seat near the back of the bus, where I looked out the window again. The guy was still looking at the bus. He was giving it the finger.

  I thought about that guy all night after the break-in at the Ashdales. Those Nine-Eight guys are tough. They play for keeps. And they don’t let anyone get away with disrespecting them or butting into their business, like I had done. What if they’d caught up with Tilo, if not that day, then some other time? What if they’d pressured him to tell where I was living? Did Tilo even know? I couldn’t remember if I had told him or not. What if I had? Would he have told those guys? Or would he have kept his mouth shut? After all, I had done my best to help him out. But maybe he didn’t know that. He’d disappeared into an alley before I stuck out my foot. He hadn’t seen me trip up those guys.

  Thinking about the Nine-Eights was enough to make me check out the street before I left for the youth center the next morning. It was enough to make me look over my shoulder the whole way there. I thought about all the other kids who were involved in programs at the youth center. Had any of them been involved with the Nine-Eights? Did any of them still know Nine-Eight members? If anyone asked them about me, would they tell? Would some Nine-Eights be waiting for me when I got to the youth center? Or would they jump me on my way home? I started to wish I’d never gone to visit Mrs. Girardi.

  Nobody followed me to the youth center. No one was waiting for me there either. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I looked around the place and saw the same old people who had been there all summer. Then DeVon waved me over.

  “Hey, Ethan,” he said, “someone came by looking for you yesterday.”

  I gulped. My worst nightmare was coming true. I tried to hide what I was feeling, but it was hard, because I was shaking all over.

  Chapter Five

  “Who was it?” I asked DeVon.

  “A cop.”

  I almost laughed out loud.

  “A cop?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  Not a Nine-Eight. A cop. Cops I could handle, especially now.

  “What did he want?”

  “He was asking about you—you know, how long you’ve been in the program, how long some of the counselors here have known you, whether you were still involved with any gangs, stuff like that.”

  It sounded like Officer Firelli hadn’t given up believing that I was somehow behind what had happened at the Ashdales’ house yesterday.

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “What could I tell him?” DeVon said. “I haven’t known you that long, so I had to make up all kinds of bull about you—you know, how you show up every day on time, how you’ve been taking the program seriously, how you’ve changed the way you look at some things, how your pictures are among the best in the program.” He grinned at me. Everything he’d told Firelli was true—well, except for the last part.

  “What do you mean, among the best?” I said. “I thought I was the best.”

  “I also told him how modest and unassuming you were,” DeVon said. Then he got serious. “Is there anything going on that I should know about, Ethan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cops don’t come around asking about kids unless something is happening.”

  “My house was broken into yesterday,” I said. “It was probably about that.”

  “He didn’t ask about anything like that,” DeVon said. “He just asked about you, and I told him what I know—the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. But he was really interested in the Picture This program. He asked me what it was all about. He asked me about the projects kids were working on. He wanted to see some of the pictures they’d taken—especially yours.”

  I could imagine Firelli being curious about what kind of pictures I had taken. He probably thought they would be weird and morbid.

  “Did you show him?”

  “How could I?” DeVon said. “I had to tell him that as long as you’ve been in the program, you’ve never backed up a single photo, even though I nag you and nag you. You’re going to be sorry, Ethan. All you have to do is drop that camera or lose it, and all the work you’ve done will be gone forever.”

  “I don’t want anyone looking at my stuff,” I said.

  “So put a password on it. I’m not kidding, Ethan. You don’t want to lose everything, do you?”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “First I want to look at what I have and work out how I want to present it.”

  “Suit yourself,” DeVon said.

  I was glad that I hadn’t backed up my pictures onto the youth center computer. I was proud of the pictures I had taken, but I didn’t want Officer Firelli looking at them, especially without my permission.

  “I’ll back everything up as soon as I have all the shots I need,” I said. “I promise.”

  DeVon sighed. “Promises, promises,” he said. “If I had a nickel for every promise that was ever made to me…” He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. I’d heard it dozens of times before. DeVon would be a millionaire.

  Sara came up
to me after that. She’s so small and innocent-looking that it was hard to imagine how she ended up in the program.

  “That cop looked at my pictures,” she said. “He asked me about you.”

  “Yeah?” I liked Sara. If I had more nerve, I would have asked her out. “What did you say?”

  “A cop asks questions? What do you think I said?”

  I had no idea. That was part of the problem. If I knew how she felt about me, maybe I could decide whether to ask her out.

  “I said all good stuff, of course,” she said. “How you’re serious about the program. How you take your camera everywhere in case you see something you want to shoot. How you’re into running.” She smiled. “How I see you running in the cemetery ravine every Sunday morning.”

  “You do?” That was news to me. I had never seen her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “And how sometimes you stop dead in your tracks, take out your camera and take a picture.” She smiled again. “Like I said, all good stuff.”

  I smiled back at her. Maybe I would ask her out. It looked like she might say yes.

  Mrs. Ashdale called my name as soon I let myself into the house late that afternoon. I found her sitting in her reading chair in the living room. Mrs. Ashdale was always reading, and I don’t mean lightweight stuff. She always had a couple of books on the go. Usually they were big fat books with hard covers on topics like history or politics or psychology or the environment. She was the smartest woman I had ever met. But she wasn’t reading when I went to see what she wanted. She was sitting quietly in her chair with her hands in her lap. Something was wrong.

  “Officer Firelli came by this afternoon,” she said.

  Boy, that cop sure got around.

  “What did he want?” I said. “Did he find out anything about who trashed the house?”

  Mrs. Ashdale didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She just looked at me, like she was wondering about something. But what?