Jaden's Chance

by Ashlynn Ally

  I’m still contemplating it when I hear a noise from inside the house. Feet. Heavy and thundering up the stairs. Shit! Okay, it’s not worth it. Leave the laptop and get out of here. So I shove it aside and zip my backpack back up, swing it onto my back so fast it probably all looks like a blur. Then I swing myself over the balustrade, and I’m just trying to find my footing in the trellis when I see it. It feels like all the breath is knocked out of me and I freeze.

  There’s a body in the doorway, the face looking into mine. The eyes in the light—green after all. It’s Justin from last night, and I see a flash of the photos of the children downstairs. The oldest, a boy, a blonde. My heart is going so crazy, I’m not sure how it’s still in my chest. All I know is, I have to get out of here. Now.

  Chapter Three

  “Wait, stop!” It’s like his voice breaks a spell and I’m able to move again, descending so fast down the trellis I’m nearly sliding down. I hear the door of the veranda open. I hear Justin yelling some more, but it’s all a blur. I’m sure I’m safe. Even though I’m pretty sure I’m falling at this point, I will be like a cat, land on my feet, and start running. He won’t catch me this time. I’ll run all the way to the ocean… dive in…

  Except I feel a quick jerk, something holding me back. I’m suspended in the air, just hanging there, my belly leaping into my throat. Quickly, I try to grab hold of the trellis again but I realize I’m at a weird angle. That’s when I get what’s happened. He has the top loop of my backpack, and he’s holding me up like I’m in a suspension harness, the way they make Peter Pan fly on stage.

  “Let go of me!” I scream, outraged that this is happening to me… again. I twist and I turn, trying to get free. The ground isn’t that far down, and he can keep my stupid backpack. Just as long as he doesn’t catch me a second time in less than a twenty-four-hour time frame.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” he shouts down at me. “You’re going to break your leg doing that.”

  “I don’t care!” I scream back. I would hobble down the road with a broken leg then, but he won’t win again. “And if you’re so concerned anyway, then let go of me and let me climb down.”

  “Why, so I can chase you down the street again like I did last night? And I will catch you again, too. I ran track all through high school.”

  With that, he hoists me up enough to grab hold of my arm. Getting me around the waist with his other arm, he pulls me like a rag doll over the balcony. I’m still struggling, doing all that I can to get away from him. We both end up in a heap on the wooden floorboards beneath us, but he won’t let me go. He holds my arms behind my back again like he did last night, only this time I’m in a sitting position.

  I’m breathing embarrassingly hard, and I can’t help but take in the scene he’s taking in: Crazy girl from last night tracked him down, climbed up the trellis, and attempted to steal his laptop, which is still lying there on the floorboards. No doubt the sight of it missing is what brought him out here in the first place. Stupid, Jaden. Really stupid.

  “It’s not what it looks like!” I blurt out. For some reason I’m desperate to explain myself, to prove my virtue in this whole situation, even if I don’t really have any.

  “It’s not?” he says, nearly comically. “So you didn’t just break into my house and try to steal my laptop. That part was all somehow a figment of my imagination?”

  “No!” I insist, and then confusing myself, “Yes. I mean, I don’t know. The door was open anyway. You ought to invest in a good alarm system if you’re just going to go around leaving doors open.”

  He assesses me for a minute. I can feel it even though he’s behind me still and I can’t see his face. “So that makes it okay then? For you to just wander in here? And what were you doing with my laptop? Checking your email, I presume?”

  “No, well, hey. Look.” I’m stammering. I hate stammering. I only do it when I’m nervous. This was pretty nerve-racking, so I try to cut myself some slack. “Last night… at the party. I didn’t give you back the right wallet. I accidentally gave you an old one of mine, and I wanted to make it right.”

  “An old one of yours,” he says pointedly, in a tone that lets me know full well he doesn’t believe me. “And what are you doing carrying around a man’s wallet? Making a fashion statement, I suppose?”

  I roll my eyes at him, struggle for a second to get free, sure he won’t loosen his grip, except he does. He lets go of me. Allows me the dignity to turn around and face him, sitting there on the floor like that. I guess he really must be confident in his running abilities. I look up at him then, but his expression is so intent I can’t keep eye contact for more than a few seconds.

  “Okay, whatever,” I manage to mumble out, casting my eyes down again, searching in a frenzy for something to focus them on. “Maybe it wasn’t mine exactly…”

  “And you accidentally gave it to me… in place of my brother’s wallet.”

  I shrug my shoulders coyly, manage a doubtful smirk. “Hey, it was dark. I was flustered. It was an honest mistake.”

  His gaze pierces into me, holding me in place like a pointed stick through a marshmallow. It’s almost like I can’t run away even if I want to. “For some reason I’m inclined not to believe you,” he says sarcastically, his tongue rolling pensive circles in his mouth.

  “It’s the truth!” I splutter out. “Why do you think I’m here now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. To maybe—” His eyes flash toward the laptop, forlorn looking all by itself in the middle of the balcony. “Rob the place? Get your revenge for me catching you last night. Which doesn’t really make sense, considering you did still get away with the wallet.”

  “It doesn’t make sense because I told you, that’s not what’s happening here. I came back to return the wallet.” Okay, so it’s not exactly true. Or is it? My head is swimming. When I realize I don’t even know myself why I came here this morning, I just feel even more confused.

  He appraises me again, and I think I might see a flicker of self-doubt in his own eyes, like maybe he was wrong about me after all. “My brother realized it was a phony as soon as I handed it to him,” he says, a bit far off, almost as if he’s talking to himself rather than me. “He had something in that wallet. Something he can’t get back.”

  “Well, I have it right here,” I assure him, reaching for my bag. “I didn’t even take any of the money in it. I swear.” I think of the letter, folded and refolded, tucked into its own little compartment, and realize that must be the something. It seems like an odd thing to place sentimental value on, just some old middle school love note, but who am I to judge?

  I expect Justin to snatch the wallet out of my hand, angry and vengeful, but he doesn’t. He takes it gently. Pokes through it, lifting flaps and rustling bills. Out thirty dollars now. And God, I’m hungry—I need my sugar fix, plus a fresh pack of smokes. And for what? What do I have to prove to this guy?

  “There, are you happy?” I say, impertinent now, like he had no right to ever think poorly of me. “Now if you don’t mind, I think I’ll be on my way.”

  I hop to my feet and brush myself off. Casual and cool, like this has all been a perfectly ordinary encounter. As I make my way toward the door, my heart skips a beat, because I think he’s actually going to let me just leave. Even though my first feeling is one of relief, I feel something else as well. Something I can’t explain, disappointment maybe, which makes absolutely no sense.

  But just as I’m about to walk through the door I see Justin’s arm reaching around me. And then he slams the screen door in my face and holds it closed like that. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he says, practically chuckling to himself. “You didn’t think I was going to let you off that easy, did you? What about my laptop? And breaking in here? Huh? How do you explain that?”

  I swallow hard, but still I manage to turn around and face him. I even look him in the eyes this time, offer up a sheepish shrug. “What can I say? Old habits die hard. I saw the lapt
op and just couldn’t help myself. I grew up stealing, okay? It’s the only way I knew how to survive.”

  That’s right, Jaden. Go for the sympathy. Make him feel sorry for you. But by the hard look on his face, I’m not so sure he’s even buying it.

  “Why would you even climb the trellis to get in here in the first place? Why not just leave the wallet in the mailbox if that’s why you were here in the first place?”

  And it all plays out again in my head. That compulsion I felt, that déjà vu feeling. I’ve been here before. “I can’t really describe it,” I stutter out a feeble explanation. My eyes can’t meet his anymore. Instead, they’re darting crazy all over the place, probably because I know what I’m about to say is ridiculous. “See, I’m a foster kid. Or a former foster kid. I’ve stayed in so many houses over the years. And this one… it seemed familiar. I just wanted to see. I don’t know if you know… what it’s like. Not to be able to go home again.”

  He’s silent a long time. I manage to steal another peek at him. He’s sucking on the inside of one of his cheeks, pensive, and suddenly, the bulk of him, the way his face is set. It’s all coming back to me. I know him. I did live here. I remember now. The mom was a blonde, too. She smelled like sandalwood and violets. She loved kids, there was always a whole gaggle of them under her feet. She had the sweetest laugh, too. My throat swells suddenly. Suddenly I’m not sure if I can breathe.

  “My mom was a foster mom,” he says. Was. His voice is solemn but matter-of-fact. He has his arms crossed, he’s so sturdy, like a statue. “I remember you. You used to leave the house at night. A sleepwalker. Your caseworker said it was too much of a liability, that we were too close to the ocean, that you might drown. So she recommended to have you moved. And then you were gone.”

  Sleepwalking. A childhood ailment I eventually outgrew. A liability. They put me in a juvenile home with bars on the windows, an intercom system, a baby jail. All this time I thought it was because I was bad, because I kept running away, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t my fault, I was sleepwalking. And then when I outgrew it, I wasn’t a cute little girl anymore. The foster homes were rough and volatile. I ran away from most of them. They always caught me again.

  “Your mom?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “You said… was…”

  “Car crash,” he interrupts me. “Drunk driver. Five years ago now, but they took all the kids. All my foster brothers and sisters. It’s been just me since, though I still watch out for them, as you witnessed for yourself last night.”

  Alex. It all made sense now. A shitty situation. Your foster mom dead, and they uproot you again, a teenager nobody wanted. And then you age out of the system.

  “So you know then,” I say. “What it’s like.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I know. You get thrown out on the street with nowhere to go. But Alex can’t stay here. He’s set in his ways, needs more help than I can give him. Some of the others, they’re doing well.” He pauses, his eyes looking me up and down. “And what about you? You said you’re eighteen? So how long has it been?”

  “Six months,” I say abruptly. “They gave me three hundred dollars and put me in a halfway house for six weeks. But the money ran out and I couldn’t keep a job.” I shrug my shoulders like, that’s life. “Like I really want to wash dishes forever anyway. Change shitty sheets in a motel. I’d rather sleep on the streets.”

  “What about school?” he quizzes. “You could have gotten loans, grants, other funding.”

  I shrug again. I don’t like rehashing all this, the hot mess that is my life. “Can’t go to college if you never finished high school.”

  “There’s GED programs.”

  I eye him derisively. “Kind of hard to study when you’re sleeping in a bush in the park.”

  “So you’re homeless.”

  I roll my eyes. “Well, I’m not exactly in the market for real estate at this point of my life.”

  “Don’t be a smartass,” he says, stern and collected. “If you couldn’t tell, I’m trying to help. Let’s go in the house. I’m burning up out here.”

  The house is only slightly cooler. It feels weird being inside again, this time having been invited in.

  "So I’m Justin,” he says as he leads me downstairs to the living room. “Justin Owens. My mom was Sarah Owens. I assume you probably don’t remember—from the time you were seven.”

  I’m looking at the pictures again, this time recognizing him as the oldest boy. “I didn’t, but I knew your name was Justin from the party last night,” I say indifferently, giving him no offer of my own name. “There’s none of your mom.” I indicate the photographs, disappointed. I would have liked to have seen a picture of this Sarah Owens, try to piece together the fuzzy fragments of my history.

  “I took the ones on the wall down,” he says, a bit coldly. “They’re still in the photo album. There’s one of you, I think. Let me find it.”

  A thrill creeps up inside me. An old photograph of me as a child. I’ve never seen such a thing. None of the other foster homes ever bothered to take a picture of me.

  He pulls out a thick album from a bottom shelf in a corner unit. He sits down on the couch with it in his lap, heavy. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do, so I just stand there awkwardly while he flips through the pages. Finally, he flicks a glance at me, offers the word, “Sit.”

  I do, perched at the edge of the couch, eager to see my old self, the whole moment almost unreal. And then there I am, a skinny little brunette in a bathing suit. I’m in the backyard, splashing with some other kids in a blowup pool. I probably wasn’t any more than seven or eight. One of my first foster homes.

  “They put me in an institution,” I murmur, uncharacteristically confiding in him for some reason. “Locked me in a padded cell pretty much.” I try to stop the spoon that’s stirring my emotions, but for once, it’s difficult.

  “Yeah, the system is messed up,” Justin agrees in a soft voice. “When my mom passed, I wanted to be guardian of the kids. There were three still living here: Alex, Dante, and Jessica. Alex had been with us since he was a little kid, even though his parents had both died, there was some loophole in the system that prevented his adoption. Dante and Jessica, they were twins, they were here almost just as long. But the state still said no, I wasn’t old enough, I was only twenty. So they split them up, all three into different homes until they aged out.”

  Two boys and a girl, the rooms upstairs—left as they’d always been. I do some quick math in my head, figure out Justin is twenty-five now, that he had been a teenager when I last saw him, not that I remember him much. There had been so many kids, so many homes—faces that never stayed the same for long.

  I’m starting to get that uneasy feeling again. Maybe it’s because this is all such an uncanny coincidence. Or maybe it’s because I never confided in anyone. I never let them see inside the walls I’ve built, and now I feel them starting to break down. I need to get out of here, clear my head, catch a bus back to Venice. Be with my own kind.

  “Yeah, well, life sucks and then you die,” I proclaim faux-blithely. I jump up from the couch and making a quick motion with my hands, brushing them together like they’re dusty—although what I’m really trying to brush away is my emotions. “It was nice to see the picture and all, but I gotta get going. Girl’s gotta eat, y’know? So keep it real, Justin. I’ll see you around, alright?”

  I make my way to the door, but he stops me with a single word, “Jaden.” It feels weird coming from his mouth because I never told him my name, and I realize he must have remembered. “I have food here, y’know,” he says, after a beat, me still frozen in mid-step.

  My survival instincts tell me this is a bad idea, that I need to turn him down. But they also tell me I have to get some kind of calories into my bloodstream, and I barely have a couple of dollars to my name.

  “What do you got?” I ask, slowly turning on my heel.

  His kitchen is full of health shit; no Pop-Tarts, no Frosted Flak
es, no candy. “I can make spaghetti,” he offers, but I shake my head. After months scrounging on the streets, the thought of anything too rich makes me sick to my stomach. Finally I land on some all-natural fruit popsicles in the freezer.

  “I’ll take a couple of these,” I say fussily, like it’s not really what I want but I’ll have to make do. I rip the wrapper off one, shove it in my mouth, store a couple more in my pocket. Make for the door again.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” That whoa-whoa-whoa shit again. Justin hops along after me, putting his hand out like he’s directing traffic to block my way. “Easy there, killer. Why don’t you stay and have a decent meal? You need to eat. You said so yourself.”

  I eye him blankly, pulling the pop out of my mouth—strawberry, with real frozen chunks of fruit in it. “It was a figure of speech,” I explain. “I don’t eat.”

  “You’re eating right now,” he points out.

  I serve him up another blank stare, like I can’t believe he’s not getting it by now. “I don’t eat real food. Especially not hippie health crap.”

  “Oh, so popsicles aren’t real food.”

  “Wow, you catch on quick.” I make to move around him, but he does the dance with me, blocking my way again. “Dude, c’mon!” I protest.

  “No, you come on,” he insists. “Stop playing with me. You just told me you’re homeless. I mean really, what kind of guy would I be if I just let you walk out that door right now?”

  “That’s a hypothetical question, isn’t it?”

  He doesn’t answer, just gives me a small exasperated shake of his head. “Jaden, stay here. There’s plenty of room. What are you going to do back on the streets? You need a leg up, don’t you? A chance to get your life together.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you’re going to help me with that?”

  He shrugs like this whole situation is no big deal. “Sure. The high school has a great summer GED program. You can have your diploma by this fall, go to community college.”