Pieces of Me

by Darlene Ryan

  “What’s this?” I said to Q.

  “I won,” he said, getting to his feet and heading for the bathroom. “Do whatever you want with it.”

  Dylan and I gathered the money. I showed him how to make piles of four so I could count it all. There was thirty-five dollars and seventy-five cents.

  “Maddie, are we rich?” he asked.

  “Well, we are today,” I said, giving him a hug. I was already thinking about where we could go for lunch.

  Q played poker again on Saturday. This time there was more than forty dollars in quarters. He smelled pretty much the same as he had after the first game.

  Monday night, I was waiting for Lucy at the top of the stairs. When I’d told Q what I was going to do, he’d made a face. “Oh, c’mon, Maddie. It’s not so bad we have to eat food from the garbage.”

  “It’s not garbage,” I said. “Lucy had good stuff—carrots, milk, tomatoes.”

  “That she got out of someone’s garbage.”

  “No. That someone carried out of the store and then she picked up. If I bought the same stuff and came out of the store and gave you the bag, you’d eat it. So what’s the difference?”

  He glanced toward the bathtub, where we could hear Dylan splashing. “I won more than forty dollars on Saturday. If you want milk and carrots, you can buy them.”

  I was starting to get pissed. I could feel a knot tightening in my chest. “What I want to do is go with Lucy and see what she does,” I said. I grabbed my jacket, stuck my head around the open bathroom door and told Dylan I was going out to try to get him more peanut butter. He’d been eating it with everything. “I’m going,” I said.

  “You’re coming back, right?” he said, his face serious. He was getting less clingy as the days went by.

  “You bet,” I said. “I’ll bring you and Fred a treat.”

  That made him smile.

  “See you,” I said to Q and went out to wait by the stairs.

  When Lucy came down the hall, she was carrying a bunch of bags. She gave me a couple of cloth bags and three plastic ones. “You got gloves?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “But it’s not that cold.”

  She smiled. “No. I meant plastic gloves.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t actually go through the garbage.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “But sometimes things like milk cartons or yogurt containers break.” She pulled a pair of thin plastic gloves out of her pocket. “Here.”

  I took the gloves and shoved them in my own jacket pocket. I thought about what Q had said, that things weren’t so bad that we had to eat stuff out of the garbage.

  Lucy walked fast. We headed across town in the general direction of the university. About four blocks over, as we waited to cross the street, she pointed ahead to a group of people—maybe five or six of them—standing on the next corner. “That’s everyone else,” she said.

  “They won’t be mad that you brought me?” I asked.

  She looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would they be?” she said. “There’s always way more food than we can all use.”

  “Hey, guys, this is Maddie,” she said as we got to the others. Everyone smiled and said, “Hi.” They all looked like university students except for one man in dark-rimmed glasses. His hair was dyed yellow, and he had an accent I couldn’t figure out.

  We walked maybe another three blocks and then the yellow-haired guy said, “Perfect timing.”

  At the corner, a guy in jeans and a long apron was carrying plastic garbage bags to the edge of the sidewalk. Everybody stopped. The same guy carried out three more bags. As soon as he’d gone back inside, we were moving again.

  Lucy pulled on her gloves, lifted a bag away from the pile and opened it. She shook her head. “This one is garbage.” She closed the bag and handed it to the guy behind her who set in on the sidewalk away from the other bags.

  Yellow-hair had a second bag open. “Got it,” he said. He pulled out two bags of sealed packages of salad stuff and handed them to me. “Just lay them out on the sidewalk.”

  I made a row of bags along the curb. There were eight all together. On the front of the bags it said, Washed and ready to serve. After that there were bags of little carrots and chopped up peppers.

  “I’ve got yogurt,” Lucy said. She had another garbage bag open and was handing big plastic tubs to a girl with blue hair.

  “I’ve got sandwiches,” someone else called.

  Once all the food was spread on the sidewalk, Yellow-hair and a guy with a messy beard carefully set the remaining garbage bags in a pile. Lucy passed around a bottle of hand sanitizer. I took off my plastic gloves and cleaned my hands.

  Everyone pretty much just took what they wanted—or maybe it was needed—and it all seemed to work out fair. I got a bag of lettuce, one of carrots and a big tub of strawberry yogurt. Someone had found apples. They looked a little bruised, but I took two anyway. Lucy handed me a jar of peanut butter.

  Yellow-hair looked at his watch. “We’d better get going,” he said.

  We started up the sidewalk, and the girl with blue hair ended up walking beside me. “Hey,” she said. “I’m Alicia.”

  “I’m Maddie,” I said.

  “Kind of surprising how much gets thrown out, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Do you do this all the time?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t afford to get my degree, otherwise.” She smiled and kind of shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t eat and get it.”

  “Do you get all your food this way?” I asked.

  “Pretty much. And my clothes and stuff.”

  “Clothes?”

  Alicia nodded and brushed a clump of blue hair back from her face. “Clothes, a monitor for my computer, dishes. Lucy found an iPod last week.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. You should come with us next week. It’s end of term, and Friday is garbage day. There’ll be good stuff on Thursday night.”

  At the front, Lucy and Yellow-hair had stopped walking. After a minute they saw whatever they were looking for. It was another pile of garbage bags. We were outside a small bakery. I ended up with a bag of different rolls and four cookies. People were saying goodnight and heading off in different directions.

  “Hey, Lucy, bring Maddie on Thursday night,” Alicia said. She waved at me and headed up the hill with Yellow-hair in the direction of the university.

  “You wanna come?” Lucy asked.

  “Umm, yeah, I guess,” I said.

  She shifted her bag from one hand to the other. “You won’t believe the stuff that gets thrown away at the end of term.” She shook her head in disgust. “Most of them are just too damn lazy to pack stuff or even take it to the Salvation Army to donate it. It’s easier to stick it out for the garbage truck.”

  “Thanks for bringing me,” I said.

  “You can come every week if you want,” she said.

  I was pretty sure I wanted.

  “We have to get ice,” Lucy said.

  “For what?” I said.

  “You don’t have a cooler, do you?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “We’ll find one on Thursday,” she said. “I have three. I’ll lend you one. Stuff like the yogurt and salad stuff lasts better if it’s cold.”

  We got ice at the grocery store, forty-nine cents for a big bag because they wanted to get rid of it. “They clean the machine on Monday night,” Lucy explained.

  When we got back to the building, she got me the cooler, a red-and-white thing like people took on a picnic, and showed me how to pack it with ice and my yogurt and lettuce. “Eat this stuff first,” she said. “Everything else will last longer.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “Six thirty on Thursday.”

  I nodded, and she headed down the hallway.

  I slipped into the room. Q and Dylan were asleep. I put the peanut butter in the window. Everything else was okay
. I got cleaned up, brushed my teeth and put on the T-shirt and sweatpants I slept in. Dylan was making those little kid snoring noises he made when he slept. If I was lucky, I had a couple of hours before he woke up from a nightmare. He was going to be real happy about the peanut butter and the cookie.

  I rolled up in my blankets, suddenly so, so tired.

  “Find anything good in the garbage?” Q asked quietly in the darkness. He rolled toward me.

  My good mood was gone like that. “It wasn’t garbage.” Okay, so technically it was garbage we were opening, but the food had been put in bags in the store and then carried out, and we got it. If the food had been in plastic grocery bags Q wouldn’t be asking me such a stupid question.

  “Maddie, I meant what I said before.” He reached out and touched my arm. “You don’t need to do this. I can work more time if I have to, and I’m pretty damn good at poker.”

  I didn’t know how to make him understand that I needed to do this. Ever since Alicia had told me that scavenging was how she could go to university I couldn’t stop thinking about it. All Q talked about was the house in the country we’d have someday. I didn’t want to live in the country. I didn’t want to milk cows and teach Dylan about growing carrots. I wanted to learn things and someday be a doctor. And I wanted Dylan to go to school.

  “If you don’t want to eat the stuff I got, you don’t have to,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, and you might as well know I’m going back out again.” I rolled over. He didn’t say anything else, and neither did I.

  twelve

  “Can you be here by six thirty for sure?” I said to Q as he got dressed Thursday morning.

  “Why?” he said.

  “Because I want to go out with Lucy. It’s the end of term or something at the university, and she says people throw out a lot of good stuff.”

  “Yeah, well, forget it,” Q said. “I’m playing poker.”

  “So play another night.”

  He pulled his T-shirt over his head. “I can’t. This is a lot higher stakes that the quarter games I’ve been playing in. They don’t let new guys in very often.”

  “I can’t take Dylan with me,” I said.

  He reached for his sweatshirt, checked to make sure Dylan was still brushing his teeth and pulled me against him. “I keep telling you, you don’t have to go picking through garbage. I mean it.” He kissed the top of my head. “See you tonight.” He called goodbye to Dylan and was gone.

  I still had half a bread roll sitting on the window ledge. I pounded the roll into crumbs with my fist, pretending it was Q’s head. Then I ate all the little bits. I probably shouldn’t have felt better, but I did.

  Just before six thirty, I told Dylan to go pee and wash his hands. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we’re going on a treasure hunt.”

  He zipped into the bathroom, did his stuff and came hopping out on one foot. “Can Fred come?” he asked. “Fred likes treasure hunts.”

  What the heck, I figured. “Sure,” I said. “Stick him in my backpack.”

  Lucy was just coming down the hall when we came out. “Is it okay if I bring him?” I asked. I showed her my makeshift wagon. “I can pull him, and if it’s not okay, well then… that’s okay.” Crap! I sounded lame.

  Lucy smiled. “Sure, bring him along.” She leaned down. “I’m Lucy,” she said.

  “I’m Dylan,” he said. “And Fred is in the backpack.”

  Lucy frowned and looked up at me.

  “Bear,” I said.

  She nodded and looked at her watch. “We better get going.”

  We clomped down the steps. Outside on the sidewalk, I set Dylan’s train down and he climbed on and grabbed the sides.

  “That is extremely cool,” Lucy said.

  We headed in the direction of the university. “What kind of stuff will there be?” I asked.

  “You name it, you’ll probably find it,” Lucy said. She was wearing her hair off her face, pulled back with some kind of stretchy headband. “Franz—the tall guy with the black-framed glasses—he found a tv at the end of winter term. Got some detergent, some dishes, that cooler I loaned you. I think Alicia got some chairs for her place.”

  She tipped her head back toward Dylan. “One of the residences is for students who have kids. You’ll probably find some toys and stuff for him.”

  The same group of people was waiting when we got to the university. Alicia smiled and came over. “Hi,” she said to Dylan.

  “Your hair is blue,” he said.

  I frowned at him. “That’s rude, kiddo,” I said.

  He got that stubborn look on his face. “But it is blue,” he said.

  “That is so neat,” Alicia said, looking at the wheeled platform. “Could I pull him?”

  My arms were tired from hauling him all the way up the hill. “Uh, sure,” I said, handing over the strap. The others were already headed toward some buildings. We followed, Alicia making horse sounds, which made Dylan laugh.

  There were two big green Dumpsters at the side of the first building we stopped at. They were so full, the covers couldn’t even close. Yellow-hair—Franz—climbed up on the side and started handing things down to the others—a black wooden chair, a desk, something that might have been a dvd player. The desk looked like it was brand-new.

  In the end, I got some dishes, laundry detergent, two boxes of Pop-Tarts, a small folding table, a windup train for Dylan and, the best thing of all, a cooler on wheels.

  “I’ll get your cooler for you,” I said to Lucy when we’d gotten everything upstairs. She’d carried my folding table, and Dylan had held her bottle of detergent on his lap.

  I unlocked the room, hoping Q would be stretched out on his bed.

  But he wasn’t.

  “Thanks,” I said to Lucy.

  She smiled. “It was fun.” She felt in her pocket. “Here.” She handed me a lime-green iPod. “The music all seems to be French.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want it?” I said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I already have one. Would you believe all Spanish music?” She picked up her detergent bottle. “If you want to come Monday, it’s the same time as last week.”

  “Yeah, I’ll try,” I said.

  “See you,” she said. She waved at Dylan. “Bye, Dylan.”

  “Bye, Lucy,” he said.

  The only way I could get Dylan in the bathtub was to let him set his train on the top of the toilet tank. He went to sleep with it set beside his bed. I had a fast bath and washed my hair. I tried to wait up for Q, but I was just too tired. I woke up when he came in and banged into my new table.

  “Oh, Maddie, hey, I’m sorry I woke you up,” he said.

  It took me a second to realize there was someone behind him. I got up, wrapping the blanket around me. “Q, who is this?” I said.

  He looked back at the person standing by the door. “His name is Leo,” he said.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked. I didn’t really care if Leo knew that I was pissed.

  “It’s okay,” Q said. “He’s just here for tonight.”

  Dylan moved in his sleeping bag behind me. “Why?” I said.

  Q didn’t say anything. I took a step toward him and slugged his arm. “Why?” I repeated.

  “I kinda won the kid in the game.”

  Kid?

  I hobbled to the bathroom and flipped on the light. I could see that the person standing by the door was just a kid, older than Dylan, eleven or twelve, maybe. He looked thin and scared, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “What do you mean you won him?” I said to Q.

  He rubbed his face. Even with the distance between us, I could smell that he had been drinking. “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “So uncomplicate it.”

  He took a step closer to me. “We’ll figure something out in the morning.” He lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  I looked over at the kid, who was edging toward the o
pen door. I thought about all the scary things that were out there on the dark street. I thought about all the scary people. I went over to him. He took a bunch of steps backward, bumping into the door frame.

  “Your name is Leo?” I asked.

  He nodded. He was skinny, like he hadn’t been eating enough.

  “You hungry?”

  He gave an indifferent shrug.

  What did I have for food? An apple. Peanut butter. Some juice. The boxes of Pop-Tarts from tonight. Q had knocked the Pop-Tarts on the floor when he’d bumped into the new table. I bent down to pick them up. “How about a Pop-Tart?” I said. I took one out of the box and held it out to Leo. He hesitated and then took it from me. He made me think of this old dog that used to hang around Pax House—jumpy, hungry, but it wouldn’t come close enough most of the time to get food.

  “Come in,” I said. He looked from me to Q. I couldn’t see his face clearly with just the bathroom light on, but he seemed scared and at the same time trying to pretend he wasn’t.

  “I’m not doing stuff,” the kid said. “Not with him and not with you.”

  Just like that old dog, he was about to run and maybe I would have let him, except I got it then, what he meant about stuff. “You don’t have to do anything with anyone,” I said. I pointed at Q. “Not him. Not me. Nobody. Got it? That’s not how we do things.”

  I turned around and gave Q a shove. “You stink,” I said.

  He went into the bathroom and closed the door. All we were left with was the light from the street coming in through the window. It was enough to see the kid, Leo, still by the door.

  I could taste something sour at the back of my throat. What kind of person bet a kid in a poker game? “Leo,” I said softly. “Come in. No one’s going to touch you, I swear.”

  He took a couple of steps into the room. I moved around him to shut the door. Then I handed him a bottle of juice. “Eat something,” I said.

  I leaned against the wall, still half wrapped in my blanket, while he ate. He watched me and the bathroom door. I gave him a second Pop-Tart, and he ate that too. Okay, so where was he going to sleep? The only space was in front of the door. That meant he might take off, but maybe if he felt he could go, he wouldn’t.