“So when are we going shopping next?” Evvie asks after we finish hauling the bed into our room. I know she’s referring to our escapade before dawn and not the search for an affordable bed that took the rest of the morning.
“I love it, Evvie, but I try not to make a habit of going too often.” It’s still risky, I try to convey, but Evvie seems almost flighty now compared to her manner this morning. Though the contrast probably does skew my perception, there is an evident effect that going to the mall in the innermost circle of the city has had on Evvie.
We were forced to go to the mall to find an extra-long twin bed frame and mattress. I was hoping to find one at the second-hand store I go to when I need to buy something other than food and toiletries. I should know better than hoping luck could be on my side, in large and small matters alike.
I hate to give Evvie a hand-me-down, but I’ve outgrown my juvenile bed and she’s still a few inches shorter than me. Since another twin is all that we can fit into the narrow bedroom, and I definitely won’t be buying anything larger after the price I paid for the twin, it makes sense that I ought to get something more fitting for me. Evvie doesn’t mind getting my old bed. She’s happy that I put practicality before my desire to make everything perfect for her.
“I think you need some gymnastics lessons. Focus on the high bars,” I tease, referring to Evvie’s question about when we can go out to the forest again. I had put so much thought into preparing Evvie to get outside of Miles, but didn’t think to spend anytime preparing her to get back in. She wasn’t tall enough to use the upper branch to balance herself as her feet scooted away from the trunk on the lower branch. She realized this about halfway across and scurried back behind the tree. I continued to scan nervously for cars or early-morning passersby, by luckily none materialized.
Evvie started out just as speedy on her second attempt. Below, I was rambunctiously motioning that I would catch her when she let go. And catch her I did, with my whole body. I hadn’t anticipated how detrimental the quick hold of the bottom branch was to the ease of the landing. I also didn’t realize how impossible it is to successfully catch a body falling from such a height. There was an undeniable forcefulness to the landing. Bruises are sure to turn up here or there on both of us, but it was nothing too much to keep us from laughing.
“Huh?” Evvie complains, not following gymnastics as my allusion to the fact that we can’t go outside again until we find a way for her to practice the fall back into Miles, Sector Eight. The average teenage girl must lose all wits about her after a trip to the mall if my sister is flighty. Maybe she is still elated from getting everything off her chest this morning.
“I’ll catch you.” My clue couldn’t be more obvious as I plummet to the media-room floor.
“Oh!” she exclaims. I roll my eyes in her plain sight. She looks as if she’s about to protest my all-in-fun annoyance with her, but then something shifts. “That reminds me,” she says about as snootily as possible, “I need to put in some hours on EduWeb. We’re going to wait to assemble your bed, right?”
I’m not sure how our tumble earlier, or my mockery of it now, reminds her of school, but I don’t bother to ask. I’ll become privy to the feeble connections swirling through her girlish mind soon enough. “Yeah, that’s fine,” I answer. “I’m going to jump in the shower.”
It’s funny how either the circumstances that brought us into this situation, or simply surpassing the brevity of an overnight stay, are giving me new insights to my sister. There is a keener intelligence and greater emotional depth than she’s presenting this afternoon, but I’m glad to see her lighthearted side too. I am prideful of the efforts I put forth and unashamed of the things I suffered on her behalf when she briefly seems the average teenager.
I strip off a sweaty set of clothes for the second time today. Lugging the box spring, mattress, and the box containing the frame and headboard into the building and to the end of the hall was not light work. I still can’t believe a non-electric, wheeled scooter and a jumping rope enabled us to move the freight from the railway station to the transitions building.
I had left Evvie to wait at the station with the items while I ran to our building to look for something to help haul them. I don’t know what I may have concocted to get the job done, never before having the need to transport something so hefty and feeling a desperation to return to my abandoned sister. It so happened that out in front of the Sector Seven transitions building were two little boys who had fashioned their own ride from toys that would become my perfect tools.
Children who live in the transitions buildings will probably never be sick from a day of spinning and eating sugary sweets at the amusement park in Sector Three. Their families wouldn’t have the means to take them there. Although tablets are government mandated, the little ones in my building will never own models that provide them with the same educational possibilities that other children enjoy. Fancy, high-tech toys are beyond their desires.
However, these children have the potential to have just as much fun as anyone. Maybe more. I promised each of the two little boys five dollars if they let me borrow their imitation Gravitron, a ride based off the principles of centripetal force. They weren’t at all hesitant to give up their toys to help a stranger. Sweet kids.
After the haul, I had the boys take me to their mother, likely a non-biological guardian judging by their difference in race. She denied the transfer since helping a neighbor was the right thing to do. Instead, she suggested that Evvie and I play with her boys for a little while as a sort of repayment.
I think those two were made of giggles, which is a rare thing for foster kids. I thought they would tire with or become nauseous by what they called growed-up speed as I took one end of the rope and whipped the rider in circles around me. The boys took turns on the scooter, allowing them a break from the spinning, which Evvie did not provide to me in the center. I was finally released from their fun when I began to really worry about the effects of my queasiness. Thankfully, the boys didn’t feel like seeing me vomit. They did, however, enjoy and poke fun at the sweat trails that moistened much of my shirt.
Thinking about playing with the two little boys this morning reminds me of two little girls whose fate was also in the hands of fosters. I’m not thinking about Evvie and me this time. I’m wondering about Tuli and Tigonee Braves, the mysterious girls who are listed as my mother’s non-biological children. I resolve to investigate them just as soon as I towel off and dress.
“How was your shower?” Evvie asks when I emerge from the bathroom.
“Refreshing.”
“That’s an interesting way to say freezing,” Evvie jokes. The transitions building charges for heated water, an expense I’m not willing to pay for very often. I always let Evvie use hot water on her overnight stays, but now cold water is something she is going to have to tolerate.
“What are you watching?” I ask, snooping over her tablet screen. Evvie tilts the screen toward me. A smile dances within me. She is watching Olympic archives of gymnasts on the high bars. She’s eager to return to my haven. Our haven.
“That’s hardly school!” I tease her.
“Not true. World Olympic events count toward my physical education credit hours.
“I doubt you need anymore Phy. Ed. credits.”
“Yeah, but they do count towards my quota this week.”
“As if you haven’t already met it.” My sister can’t fool me about much. It’s Saturday—the final day to complete weekly hours. I know how important Evvie’s school is to her. Even with her discovery shaking her up the way it did, I know she would not have allowed her credit hours to slip.
“Mr. Vanderil says you can never know too much.” Wrong. Apparently he doesn’t live in the same society I do. You can know too much, and if you do, it’s very dangerous. “I met this week’s quota on Wednesday and I’m already way ahead of my quarterly goals in every core area,” she boasts.
“Alright, smarty pants
. Why don’t you dismount the couch and cartwheel into our room to help me assemble this bed.”
I half expect her to do it, but the abrupt hall and doorway are far too narrow for a gymnastic escapade. “What’s on our agenda for the rest of the night?” Evvie asks as she follows into our room.
“We’ll put together this bed, cook something for dinner, eat, one can hope you’ll decide to shower,” I kid, “and that’s it,” I decide. “The rest is up to you.”
“Sydney?” My name falls off Evvie’s tongue with a seriousness that hasn’t characterized our interactions since before the sunrise. “I was thinking about this while we were at the mall today, and again a little bit ago. I just wanted to say that I really am sorry about Mom. Not necessarily that I’m sorry,” she points to herself, “but that I’m sorry,” she clarifies. “I just feel really sad for you, Syd,” she continues, her throat tightening some. “Like, it’s hard for me sometimes to think about how unfair my life is, and it’s not bad at all compared to everything you’ve gone through and have been expected to do,” she says, referring to herself as a burden.
“Don’t do that,” I interject before Evvie says more or tears up. “Don’t you ever feel sad because I’ve had to look after and take care of you. Evvie, what would I have if I didn’t have you?” I don’t give her the opportunity to answer—nothing would be true. “I’ve never, ever been upset about my responsibility to you. Never. So you certainly don’t need to feel bad about it. And thank you for the unnecessary apology about Mom. You’re very empathetic.” You’re a good person with a good heart. You’re not like the others. “I hope you really do forgive me about having lied to you.”
“I do. I also understand why you did.”
Evvie and I spend a moment in our own thoughts as we tear apart the packaging around the pieces of my new bed frame.
“One more thing, Ev. I don’t want to hear anymore swearing out of you, little miss.” Evvie studies me for a moment to see whether I’m really scolding her for using a curse word much earlier this morning when she was frustrated with my listening, my trusting. She’s at a loss to figure out whether I’m serious, because I’m not sure if I am. A smile escapes from the corner of my mouth and hers follows suit.
“Do you care if I take my shower first and then we put this thing together?” Evvie asks.
“Please!” I kid. “No, that’s fine. We ought not break a sweat doing that.”
“Oh my gosh, you talk like such a dork. We ought not…” she mocks.
“Get out of here. Go enjoy a cold shower!” I throw back. And I do feel like a total dork, because I find that I’m still grinning wildly after Evvie’s been out of the room for minutes.
I pick up my tablet from the nightstand next to my old bed and decide now is as good of a time as any to look up Tuli and Tigonee Braves. I want to see if there is any history of them in the orphanage, because most kids who have been moved into fosters’ care have at least some stay, however lengthy or brief, at the orphanage first. This isn’t always the case, but it happens that way more often than not.
I type the names into the Internet search engine, remembering how Evvie spelled them before we climbed the bur oak to return to Miles. Shading quickly fills the loading time indicator, and a no results match your search message is delivered. That’s confusing. No, unsettling.
I decide to search each of the girls’ names individually, but have no success in my search. Everyone has some information that can be found about them on the Internet. Everyone has a chip, which means everyone older than thirteen (and most older than three) also have a tablet. You automatically have an indestructible TabFile when you register your new tablet to your social security code number. All basic, public domain information like given names, ages, birthdates, birth genders, natural-eye colors, ethnicities, and county of residence are provided. Every person owning a tablet or another device capable of connecting to the Internet has access to this public knowledge.
There is a chance that neither of the Braves girls owns a tablet. The court record showed that they were adopted six years ago, meaning they are at least six years old, but one sister is likely at least a year older, being that twins are exceedingly rare.
Children with tablets can begin logging hours on EduWeb at age three, when they qualify for preschool. This is why most children over the age of three own a tablet. At five, or sometimes six with a variance, children are required by law to begin their formal schooling. Miles County does have two elementary schools to which an elect population opts to physically send their children. Willing fosters usually do not have the funds or the desire to send their children to these elite institutions.
A forced foster, someone who adopted the child or children of a deceased friend or relative, might be wealthy enough to afford this. It is possible Tuli and Tigonee have gone six or seven years without owning a tablet, but it is unbelievable that their names have gone unmentioned on the Internet by a friend, relative, teammate, or an instruction monitor.
I type Loretta Harter on the floating keyboard because I don’t want to say my mother’s name out loud. Suspiciously, the search again yields no results. I was actually not searching to view my mother’s information, but to see if there are any other Loretta Harters living in Miles. No results? How can this be possible? I have looked up my mother’s name dozens of times before and have clearly seen her picture and basic information on her TabFile. I’ve also read a little anecdote of my parents’ marriage on the county’s unions’ database. I’ve seen these and other mentions of my mother on the Internet before, including her obituary. Where have those gone? Why can’t I find them now?
I’m beginning to believe there are far too many coincidences here. I’ve invented many excuses: the misappropriation of the Braves girls to our Loretta Harter, the chances that the girls do not yet own a tablet and do not have any trace of their existence online, and now all of my mother’s information mysteriously evaporating—the likelihood of all of these unconnected events occurring together by chance alone is absolutely miniscule. Impossible.
That’s because these events are connected and not by chance. Evvie is more right than I realized about her instinctive reaction. And again I have to forego telling her the truth to protect her. Her instruction monitor was wrong. There is such a thing as knowing too much, especially when the informed mind belongs to an untrained, fourteen-year-old mouth.
Concealed in the Shadows Page 10
