Eleven and Holding

by Mary Penney

  “So how come Ginger had him, then?” I asked.

  “After Phillip died,” he said, and I knew that had to be the hardest string of words in his vocabulary, “Ginger went to pieces. She and I both did, but he was her only son, her beautiful Phillip. She’d been a single mother, so he was all she had. I wanted to do something, give her something, anything, to make the hurt less.”

  He stopped a moment, and I wondered if he’d continue. After a pause, he did. “So, I gave her Mr. McDougall, who Phillip adored.” Chuck blew out a deep, shaky breath. “I told her I was going to be too busy with the café to take care of him anymore. Which wasn’t true, but it was the only way she would have taken him from me.”

  “But wasn’t that hard?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  He looked over at me, his face full of grief. He nodded. “It almost killed me,” he said, and his voice cracked. “It was like losing Phillip twice.”

  I thought about how that must have been for Ginger—losing her son and then having his dog come up missing. Losing them both, she must have been—

  “Ohhh,” I said, breathless, as pieces fell softly together. The food, the clean hair-free furniture, that neighbor boy’s story of Mr. McDougall being “kidnapped.”

  “Mr. McDougall died at Ginger’s house, didn’t he?”

  Chuck nodded his head slowly.

  “And you,” I said, my voice halting. “She called you, and you went to get him so you could bury him.” I pressed my lips together hard. I had to keep asking until I could make it real. “Was Ginger there when Mr. McDougall died?”

  “Yes.”

  “But she won’t remember it, will she?”

  Chuck wiped his eyes on the collar of his shirt. “I think she can’t. She can’t take any more. It’s just too much.”

  I nodded, knowing. Knowing that place she had found to go when things just got so hard. In that place, you just stopped seeing. Even the things that were right in front of you.

  Like with Dad. There was something Mom knew. Something Twee saw. Something wrong with him I never wanted to face. And so, I guess, I just didn’t see it.

  I hung my head. Tears ran a course down my face then, leaving a big wet spot on my shirt, right over the place of my heart.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The scariest thing about county juvenile hall wasn’t the sound of the heavy metal doors that clanked behind us or even the three burly boys in orange jumpsuits mopping the floor. It was the look my mother gave me when she came to fetch Chuck and me from the guard’s station. It was combustible. That look could launch rockets out of NASA. And after the day I’d just had, you’d think nothing would surprise me. But having Mom come out of the locked-up side of juvie with her eyes lasered on me was like a knee to the solar plexus.

  I tried to swallow. “Hi, Mom,” I squeaked, mouse-like.

  She crossed her arms over her chest.

  We waited while a uniformed officer with a tree trunk for a neck searched through Chuck’s picnic basket for contraband. He took out the plastic knives and forks and then dropped them into a bin below his desk. Just in case Chuck and I decided to help Switch dig his way out of the joint with a white plastic knife, I guessed.

  “Okay, clear,” the guard said, giving my mom a nod.

  “Follow me” was all she said.

  We took up behind her down a long hallway with a very shiny floor. Chuck gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and I prepared myself for the biggest mess of trouble I had ever cooked up in my life.

  Mom pressed her badge into a metal plate next to a door that read “Mediation.” It clicked open, and she held the door as Chuck and I passed through into a room with a giant, long table. Occupied by one buzz-headed kid.

  “Switch!” I started to head over to him, except that Mom reeled me in by the back of my shirt. “No sir, young lady. No sir.”

  “Oh man, Macy, I’m glad you’re okay!” Then he looked over at Chuck. “Thanks for picking her up and everything.” He took a long deep breath and then dropped his head between his hands for a minute.

  Mom pulled me by the shoulders, swinging me around until I was facing her. She squeezed me hard against her and then whispered for my ears only. “I have never been so scared or so glad to see anyone in my entire life.” Her voice wobbled at the end, and she cleared her throat hard.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I—”

  “Later. We’re going to sort all this out. Okay?” She gave me a little shake and then buried her face in my hair for a second.

  I nodded, and she straightened herself up.

  “You two could be sisters,” Switch said. “I would have never guessed mother and daughter.”

  “Can it, Terrance,” Mom said. She put her hands on her hips and blew out a breath. “I hardly know where to begin with you two.”

  “How about with dinner?” Chuck asked. “These kids need to eat, Elise. It’s been a very long day.”

  She nodded and squeezed the bridge of her nose while Chuck set out paper plates and opened boxes of baby back ribs, steak fries, and barbecued beans. And an entire half slab of chocolate cake. Switch and I leaped at the food, like a couple of wolverines.

  While Chuck and Mom talked together in hushed voices at the back of the room, Switch whispered over a rib. “Would it have killed you to let me know your mom was a probation officer? And mine in particular?”

  I shoved a load of beans into my mouth and shrugged. “Guess before you take a girl off on a crime spree, you should at least find out her last name.”

  Switch looked at me across the table with that nervous kind of look someone gets when you’ve made a horrendous mess on your face. They’re hoping you’ll catch on soon before they have to tell you.

  I mopped my mouth with a napkin, which came away bright red. If you hadn’t known it was Cajun barbecue sauce, you might have thought I’d just suffered a gunshot wound to my face.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m starved.”

  Switch smiled and loaded his spoon with a chunk of chocolate cake. “Hey, any chance I’m going to find a key baked in here?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t make the cake. I was kinda busy today.”

  I studied him a moment while he ate. He looked worse than I did. He’d apparently spent a couple of hours in the Dumpster before the cops nabbed him.

  “Terrance, Macy?” Mom called. “We’re going to step out into the hallway a moment to make a call. Finish your dinners. But I’m standing right here.” She tapped on the door’s window letting us know she’d have one eye on us the whole time.

  “That’s gotta be tough,” Switch said, pointing his chin in Mom’s direction.

  “I suppose there are worse things.”

  “So? You still haven’t told me about your dad. Did you find him or what?”

  I got up and threw my paper plate into the corner wastebasket, under a huge American flag. Wiped a few crumbs from the old polished finish of the long table. Studied a framed copy of the Bill of Rights posted on the wall.

  “You going to answer me any time today?” Switch asked, wiping his index finger carefully with his napkin.

  I shrugged.

  “Okay, guess not.”

  “What do you think is going to happen to you?” I asked. “I mean, how long could they actually keep you here?”

  “They can keep me as long as they want, if they think there’s a danger that I’ll run away again. Since I’m a ward of the court, they get to call the shots.” He polished off the rest of his cake. “I don’t care what they say. I’m not going back to the Gilberts’ house, and I’m not going back to the Cosgrows, or the Reyburns, or the Thompsons, or the Fagens. And I am absolutely not ever, ever, ever going back to the Arnolds,” he said, the muscle in his jaw flexed. He clasped his fingers together until his knuckles were white and his fingertips bright red.

  I went and sat next to him.

  He picked up his plastic spoon and snapped it in two.

  I took it away from him.

  “I�
�ve had it up to here with what people think will be good for me—tough love, outward bound, inward out, sports camp, young farmers, and all the other ‘fix the foster kid’ programs.”

  I wanted to pat him somehow, but I didn’t know how or where. Best to just sit, I thought.

  The door clicked open, and he sat back up straighter, feelings quickly erased from his face. Except the one that said, What do I care what you do with me?

  “I called the judge,” Mom said, looking at Switch. “I wanted to talk to her about our options. If you really don’t want to go back to the Gilberts—”

  “I really won’t,” he said, his voice hard.

  “Terrance, I hate to book you. You don’t really belong here, but you’re making this very difficult. It’s my job to keep you safe. Sleeping on the Greyhound bus is not an option.” She tapped her pen hard against the table and now looked at us both. “You two are very, very lucky that Ms. Grady is not pressing any theft charges. Terrance, you don’t even have a driver’s license, and you,” she said, shooting me a deadly look, “are grounded until your senior prom.”

  A protest rose up, but I let it go.

  She closed her eyes a moment. “When I think of what could have happened to either of you today—”

  “But didn’t, Elise. Nothing bad happened,” Chuck reminded her. “They’re both safe.”

  “I thought your sudden interest in the Green Angels was a little suspect,” she said. “I got the real story, or at least part of the real story, out of Twee first thing this morning. Did you two even go to Raging Falls? Your aunt Liv and I spent half the day there looking for you.”

  Switch and I looked at each other, realizing we’d forgotten to get our stories straight.

  “I think I’d like to take the Fifth,” I said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Me too,” Switch chimed in. “I take the Fifth.”

  “Denied,” Mom said. She tapped her pen on the thick case file in front of her. “Then I get a call that one of my runaways has been picked up in Los Robles and is raising bloody Cain with the cops. He’s yelling about a girl named Macy who is stranded at Boomtown Records.”

  I had to smile. Switch had been worried about me. How about that?

  “Ah,” Chuck said.

  “Yes, ah,” Mom said. “I was on my way downtown to rescue this mysterious stranded girl named Macy, but Terrance told me you were on your way.”

  I could tell we were going to have a long, hard talk on the way home about what I’d really been up to all day.

  Switch cleared his throat and shredded a nearby napkin, like a nervous chipmunk. “If I refuse to go into any more foster homes, will they just keep me locked up till I’m eighteen? I’d just as soon be here than with some messed-up foster family. Really, I don’t mind. The food’s decent. The staff is pretty nice if you stick to their rules. I can live with that.”

  Mom closed the files in front of her and then looked at her watch. “We’ll revisit that tomorrow, Terrance. This has been quite a day.”

  “Does Dana still work here?” Switch asked. He turned to me. “I’ve done time here before, and Dana is a really cool counselor. She tells some seriously grisly ghost stories at night.” He glanced quickly at my mom. “I mean, after we finish our team-building circle and trust falls at night.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Mom said, “I’ll bet.”

  She gave him a small smile, and I could see that underneath all the mad, she really liked Switch. “Yep, Dana’s here. She was asking about you. I’ll call her to come process you and take you back to your bunk.”

  Next, she looked over at me. “One of us needs to call Twee. She’s been worried sick about you all day.”

  I jumped out of my seat, like a rocket launched. “I’ll call her, please?”

  She handed me her cell phone and a stern look. “Three minutes. Just the facts. Oh, and tell her we’ll be home around eleven. She should put Jack to bed now, if she hasn’t already. I called her mom and cleared it with her so that Twee could stay late.”

  I went into the hall and ducked into the girls’ restroom for some privacy. Then I dialed the number. “Twee! It’s me!” I said when she picked up, her voice breathless.

  “MACY! Where have you been? Everybody’s looking— Oh man, you are in such trouble with your mother!”

  “I know—”

  “I told her!! I am so-so-so sorry! But she used that probation officer thing on me, and I just caved. She said something about me being an ‘accessory after the fact’—”

  “Twee, its okay! I’m with my mom. We’re coming home. She said to put Jack to bed.”

  “What happened?” she yelled into the phone.

  An older girl with a lot of tattoos and very stiff hair came into the restroom. I turned away and covered my mouth, so she couldn’t hear me. “Twee,” I blurted in a rush. “Look, I lied about today. And I’m sorry. I hated lying to you.”

  “You didn’t go with Switch after all?” she asked, sounding relieved. “Where the heck have you been all day?”

  “Well, I did go with Switch, but not to Raging Falls. I had him take me to Los Robles.”

  I could hear her suck in her breath, even all these miles away. “Did you find him?” she asked breathlessly.

  I buried my teeth in my thumbnail. “No,” I said. I looked up in the bathroom mirror, took my thumb away from my mouth. “Least not— Well, no . . . he wasn’t really there.”

  Which was true. The dad I knew, my personal superhero, my life coconspirator—he was gone. What was left in his place was not anyone I recognized.

  In the end Chuck convinced my mom to leave her government car at juvenile hall, and he drove the two of us home. Said he’d feel better if she just took it easy for a while.

  Mom looked like she might argue with him, but then just went along. Maybe she wasn’t looking forward to being alone with me, either.

  Chuck was, it turned out, pretty thoughtful. Maybe he’d always been, but when you’re looking for someone to be a giant creep no matter what, it’s hard to notice when they do something uncreepy.

  And he wasn’t trying to get my mom to fall in love with him. Chuck had a broken heart. He was just trying to get by. Like I was. Like Ginger was.

  My mom sat in the front seat of Chuck’s car and pulled her big clip out of her hair. That was her sign for going off duty. Then she reached behind the seat, searching for my hand.

  I gave it to her, and we just both held on for a while.

  Chuck put on some soft music, and they talked a long time about Switch. About how a kid like him could end up so much worse if he didn’t get a real chance at a stable home. But my ears were too tired to pay attention. I fell asleep—almost a coma, really—and slept a very long time.

  Dear Mr. Jimenez,

  The Sixth Thing About Me: this one is sort of secret, so please don’t tell anyone. I’ll be on the soccer team at Kit Carson (that’s not the secret), but I really don’t want to play soccer. I don’t even like it! I love basketball best, and the Kit Carson Cougars could really use me. I watched some of the games last year, and your team is pretty awful. My dad wants me to play soccer, though. It’s his favorite sport. I don’t want to hurt his feelings. If you have kids, make sure you find out what they like to play best. And even if your kids are better than you at a sport, you should be encouraging and help them play the sport they like.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Macy L. Hollinquest

  PS Last year I also missed learning about Roman numerals during that week I was sick. If I ever go to Italy, I will be in big trouble trying to tell time and paying for pizza.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I ran my hand lightly over the new big window outside Nana’s coffee shop. Chuck hadn’t had time yet to have a new sign painter come. The glass was still blank.

  Caffeine Nana’s wasn’t open yet. It was still early. Mom had given me permission to leave the house for just one important errand. Then I had to come straight back home. I cou
ld see Chuck sitting in one of the booths, working on some papers. He was sitting at my favorite booth—the one that got the best morning sun. He saw me and waved, and then came to the door and unlocked it. He gave me a big smile.

  “Can I ask you something—” I started.

  “Hey, can I ask you a favor—” His words ran over mine.

  We laughed, kinda nervous, both standing in this new place together—the one where we talk like regular people and I am not giving him the stink eye.

  “You go,” he said.

  “Can I, um, come in?” I asked.

  He didn’t make a big deal about it like he could have. Didn’t mention that I’d never been in since he’d bought the place. He just stepped aside and said softly, “Of course.”

  I breathed in the air that was so familiar. I could almost smell Nana’s perfume mixed in with the grill and the leather booths. This early in the day, it was so quiet inside, so cool, with the overhead fan humming its rhythm. I felt almost like I was walking into a holy kind of place—like I was in the presence of what Father Dan at Aunt Liv’s church called “things unseen.” And they were good things.

  So much of me lived in this space, so much of Nana, I thought. It was still hers, and nothing Chuck could do would ever change that. Besides, he wasn’t the one who had taken my nana.

  I turned and looked back at him. “It looks good in here.”

  “It does now,” he said, with a nice smile. I never had noticed how handsome he was before, really. I went over and perched on one of the old stools. Gave myself a slow spin while I collected my thoughts.

  Chuck sank down into a booth and waited.

  “I want to go see Ginger this morning,” I said. “I’d like to apologize and stuff.”

  He looked at me, a question in his eyes.