My Name Is River Blue

by Noah James Adams

  "Yeah," said Ant. "We're roommates."

  Carlee and Max already knew, but it was news to Tina and Marcy. Marcy asked the obvious question. "How did you end up as roommates?"

  Max answered her and abruptly changed the subject while giving her a look that would have told anyone with an ounce of good manners to leave it alone. "They're foster kids. Hey, Carlee, have you girls learned all your cheer routines, so you don't make us look bad at the game Thursday? Just because you won at cheer camp, you can't get lazy."

  Carlee started to answer when Marcy rudely cut her off to see why Max changed the subject. "So where do you guys live, River? You don't mind people knowing, do you?"

  Max gently elbowed Marcy, but she ignored him and stared smugly at me. She smelled blood in the water and insisted on waiting for my answer. I had known her for only a few minutes, but Marcy was so transparent that I didn't need more time. What I saw was a rude, mean-spirited bitch. She enjoyed bringing misery to others less fortunate than she was, and I guessed that her target was usually a shy, poor, unpopular kid who wouldn't fight back. Maybe she liked tormenting a kid who silently took the abuse as if it were only a joke made in good fun, or maybe she attacked a kid who ran away in tears while Marcy and her friends savored their power to inflict pain. I doubted that Marcy would care if her cruelty pushed a depressed kid over the edge to suicide.

  The dark, angry part of me considered my response. Marcy was the kind of girl I despised enough to beat the same as I would a guy who jumped in my face. I sipped my water, found her eyes, and spoke bluntly. I suddenly didn't care who knew.

  "We live at Tolley House with six other guys and our house parents. It's a place for foster kids who were arrested. They're on probation for a first offense, or they're on parole from juvie prison. The state likes to keep dangerous delinquents with no parents in one place, so they can watch us."

  Marcy didn't blink. She coolly stared back at me. "So which kind of delinquent are you? One on probation or one from juvie prison?"

  "Marcy, that's enough!" Carlee warned.

  "More than enough," agreed Max. "Totally out of line is more like it. Guys, come on. Let's walk, and I'll show you the grounds." Max stood up and motioned for Ant and me to join him.

  "RB, let's go. She ain't worth it," pleaded Ant.

  I remained seated as I returned Marcy's stare with an icy one of my own. My anger threatened to boil over, but I controlled it and calmly answered her. "Well, Marcy, I'm one of the ones they paroled from Stockwell, and since you want in my shit so bad, I'll answer your next two rude questions. The answer to the first one is I did two years."

  I stood, towering over Marcy, and leaned across the table until I spoke in a whisper only inches from her face. "The answer to the second one is manslaughter. See, Marcy, I have an anger management problem, and I lost control with a snobby girl about your age. I couldn't take hearing her whiny voice anymore, so I choked the nosey bitch until her eyeballs popped and bled. It was a real mess."

  Marcy's face could not hide the fact that I scared the hell out of her. She couldn't speak. During her pampered upbringing, she had never antagonized anyone that she believed was seriously capable of the violence I described. I guessed that in all the times she had played her games of belittling and bullying less fortunate kids that it had never turned ugly for her.

  "Not much fun when somebody picks on you, is it Marcy?" I held my stare until I saw Marcy's tears ruining her makeup, and then I turned and strode in the direction of the changing rooms. Ant, Max, and Carlee followed behind me, trying to make me slow down and talk, and when Carlee grabbed my elbow, I had to stop or drag her.

  "River, I'm sorry," said Carlee. "If I had known that she would act that way, I would have never had her sitting there. I don't like her much, but since her family is new to the neighborhood, my mother said I should invite her. Plus, Max was interested in meeting her so that's why she sat with us."

  "Well, I'm not interested now," said Max. "What a bitch. River, don't leave, dude. You were having fun before you met her, and I promise you, I'll get rid of her butt."

  "I'm down with whatever you want, RB," said Ant. "I guess we have to wait for Papa, but if you want to leave, just say the word."

  Carlee was insistent. "River, please come with me. We can take a walk through the gardens. Just you and me. I really want to get to know you better. Please, River."

  "I need to make sure Marcy gets home without causing more trouble," said Max. "Ant, maybe you can talk to Tina while Carlee and River take a walk." He grabbed Ant around his shoulders and steered him away from Carlee and me.

  I allowed Carlee to lead me out through a gate that opened into a large garden of flowers and plants, many of which were so perfect that I touched a few to see if they were real. The garden had such a calming effect on me that I began to think less about my confrontation with Marcy and more about enjoying my walk with Carlee.

  As we strolled along, Carlee looped her arms around one of mine as if we were a couple, and I could hardly believe my luck as I gazed down at the soft, smooth skin of her pretty face. Beneath my chin, her hair smelled fresh like an early spring morning in the park, and I caught myself before I did anything as weird as sniffing it. I fought instincts that I didn't know could be so strong, and I tried to focus on something other than the fact that I had the most popular girl in school holding on to my arm. It wasn't easy.

  "This is beautiful out here," I said. "Who keeps up with it?"

  "People that work for us," answered Carlee. She didn't sound interested. "I don't know their names, I just see them working."

  "How long have they been doing your landscaping?"

  "Years. For as long as I can remember. What difference does it make?"

  "None, I guess. Just seems like you would know the names of anyone who worked here for years."

  "River, it's not like we invite those sorts of people to dinner. They do their work and my father pays them. Then they go do whatever worker people do."

  I wondered if Carlee realized how snobbish she sounded. "Ant and I were thinking of working with your landscaping crew some day. Maybe you could hook us up and then I could tell you what worker people do after they get paid."

  "Don't be silly, River. Let's sit over here." Carlee missed my point and led me by the hand to a gazebo. She sat on one of the two benches and pulled me down next to her. "I come out here by myself a lot. Just to think."

  "It's a nice place. I used to live with some people who had a nice garden but nothing like this."

  "You had to move around a lot?" Carlee asked.

  I held Carlee's hand, rubbing the soft skin with my thumb. "Yeah, I had four foster families before Tolley, but I spent most of my time in two group homes. I was in the little kids home until I was six, and then I was in and out of the junior boys home between families. And there was the two years in Stockwell." I hated that she had to hear that I was in juvie prison, but unbelievably, she didn't seem to care. It was almost as if she already knew.

  "About Stockwell. Max, Tina, and I won't tell anyone else."

  "Thanks. I shouldn't have said anything, but I was pissed."

  "River, I'm so sorry for how Marcy acted. I wanted you to have a good time, and I've wanted to get to know you since you started school with us. I have a confession to make about tripping in the hall. I did it on purpose."

  "I kinda figured, but I wasn't about to miss a chance to hold a pretty girl."

  Carlee punched me playfully in the shoulder. "So you just let me be a drama queen."

  "Sure, I did. I think when you get to high school next year that you should go out for drama club."

  Carlee giggled and inched closer to me. I draped my arm around her, and there was a pause in our conversation until I broke the silence.

  "I'm a foundling." I'm not sure why I said it. I had never just blurted it out to anyone.

  "A foundling?"

  "Yeah," I continued. "When I was three days old, my mother left me in the pedi
atric waiting room of the hospital. She stuck a nametag to my blanket with 'River Blue' on it, and that's all I know about my parents."

  "Really? I've heard of that happening, but I never knew anyone personally. So you have no idea about your family background." Carlee looked away for a moment as if she were considering what I told her. "I can't imagine knowing nothing about my family."

  "No one can unless it's another foundling. I don't ever talk about it much, but I think about my parents every day. I want to know why they deserted me. I'm always wondering if I'll ever meet them, or if I'll at least find out who they are."

  Carlee was curious about my name, as most people usually were. I had heard it a thousand times. "You have a pretty name. I wonder how your mother came up with it."

  "I have no idea. I doubt that 'Blue' is the name of either of my parents because I don't think that my mother would have left a real name for the cops to trace. There are some people with that last name in the state, but I think 'River Blue' was just based on something she liked that had some special meaning to her."

  Carlee raised her face to mine, and gently kissed my lips. I hesitated before pulling her closer to me and returning the kiss. I had never kissed a girl, but somehow I knew to part her lips with my tongue, and she accepted me, responding passionately. I had dreamed many times of a similar scene with Carlee, but I had never imagined the intensity of the feelings that burned through us like a windblown fire sweeping through a dry forest.

  Our kisses became urgent, and our hands aggressively explored each other. My heart raced, and my breathing turned ragged as if I were sprinting a forty that never stopped. I heard a noise that was probably just a squirrel, but it was enough to break the spell and allow my common sense to return. I was afraid that someone would find us with Carlee's hand moving inside my swim trunks and my hand groping under her top.

  I told her we had to stop, but she ignored me. Her face was flushed, her eyes were glazed, and her warm body writhed against me as if she were trying to crawl inside my skin. I was nervously glancing around us and trying to pull her hands away when it hit me. I thought I might black out, and I had to fight to catch enough breath to speak to her.

  "Carlee, we have to stop. Someone will see, and we'll get in trouble." What I really thought was that I would get in trouble, not her. In my head, I saw a cop throw me in the back of his police cruiser that would take me back to Stockwell. "Please, Carlee." She finally heard the panic in my voice.

  "It's okay. No one can see us out here," Carlee whispered against my neck.

  I gained control and gently moved Carlee a respectable distance away from me. I held her arms still and spoke softly and calmly. "I like you a lot. So much that it scares me, but we have to stop. Someone catching us is just part of it. We're too young."

  "I like you a lot too. You're the only boy I've dreamed of being with like this."

  She was still looking at me as if she could eat me. Where did I hear that girls always played hard to get? Who said a boy had to work hard just to tag second base? Carlee showed me that I was woefully uneducated about girls.

  "Yeah, I dreamed of you too, but the thing is, we could make a mistake that would ruin our lives. Your parents would freak if they knew you even held hands with a boy like me. I'm on parole, and they could accuse me of doing stuff that would send me back to Stockwell."

  "Okay, I don't want to make you nervous," said Carlee. "I thought as big as you are that you were more mature than the other boys." She sounded disappointed.

  "We're too young to get crazy and make a bad mistake just because we're physically mature enough. Who knows? Maybe my parents were young. Maybe they lost control and went too far."

  Carlee sat up straight, leaving one hand in mine as the only contact between us. "You're pretty close with Papa Ray, aren't you?" Carlee asked.

  I was confused about the abrupt change in subject. "Yeah, Ant and me both. He's good to us."

  "He's always good to foster kids."

  Carlee surprised me. "You know him that well?"

  "Everyone in the county knows Papa. My father has known him since high school. My mother was a few grades behind him, but she knows him from taking riding lessons at his farm. She also knew Lisa, the girl he was going to marry."

  "I guess I never thought how connected people could be in a small town."

  "You know Lisa died before they married, right?"

  "Yeah. He told me that he loved a girl who died."

  Carlee nodded. "Some kind of cancer. She went very fast. You know she's the reason Papa has a soft spot for foster kids, don't you?"

  "No. I didn't. Lisa was a foster kid?"

  "Yeah. I heard she grew up mostly in the girls' home."

  The new information from Carlee was like the sun breaking from behind dark clouds and throwing a new light on Papa. It made sense to me why he gave so much of himself to me and other state kids, and why he didn't want me to exclude Ant from our time in the park when Ant first arrived at Tolley House. Lisa had obviously shared a lot with Papa, and he was empathetic with kids like us because of her. His relationship with Lisa was why he understood me better than other adults did.

  "River, are you okay? Did I say something wrong?"

  "No, Carlee. I'm just never comfortable asking too many personal questions, so I didn't know much about Lisa. I'm sure Papa would have told me more about her if I had asked him."

  "Yeah, I'm sure he would have. At least you know that he really does care about you and Ant. He has a big heart for all kids, but foster kids are special to him."

  "Yeah. I learn more every day about what a great guy he is." I thought of how nasty I was to Papa when we first met, and I wasn't very proud of it.

  "You go out to his farm a lot?"

  "Yeah, once a week at least. Ant and I have stayed overnight a few times. Why?"

  "Because I'm thinking of taking riding lessons like my mother did. It would be a good way for me to see you without my parents around to make you nervous. You can't tell anyone, but I got the idea from Mom because she took lessons when she was young to see a boy who worked there. Her parents didn't approve of him because he was a Mexican farm worker."

  I grinned at the conniving girl. "Okay, Carlee, I see the plan. Your mom was sneaky and now it's your turn. You know, I really do want to be with you, but I don't want either of us to do anything that we'll regret."

  "Since you don't want trouble, we better walk back before my mother misses me."

  "Good idea."

  "Oh, River. You were just messing with Marcy about choking that girl. Right?"

  I laughed. "Right."

  I stood, followed by Carlee, who stretched upwards on her toes to kiss me once more. Before we walked back to rejoin the party, we checked each other to make sure that there were no signs of us doing anything but walking. She cleaned a smear of lipstick from my cheek and pronounced me suitable to return. I was glad that the only other issue I had didn't show. Yes, I caught the pun as soon as I wrote it.

  As we strolled back through the gardens, I was nervous, but I decided that it was worth my anxiety to share a new experience with a Carlee. I wanted to spend more time with her, but I hoped that she would be satisfied with taking things slowly. I didn't want to be part of creating a mistake like me, and I didn't want her father accusing me of something that would send me back to Stockwell. I had already learned with the Paulsons that I would lose a fight against a lie backed with money or political favors.

  As Carlee and I approached the pool and recreation area, the gate swung open, and we came face to face with Beth Summers. I had previously only seen the woman from a distance when I was swimming in their pool. Standing there at the gate with Mrs. Summers only a few feet away, I could see how much Carlee resembled her pretty mother. They had the same blond hair, flawless complexion, and attractive figure that would make any guy stare. Mrs. Summers wore a simple, pale blue sundress similar to Carlee's dress. Carlee and her mother had no need for heavy makeup, overly fan
cy clothes, or too much jewelry. With their natural beauty, it was better for them to go as simple as possible.

  "Well, there you are, dear," said Mrs. Summers. "I was wondering where you were."

  "Mom, this is Max's friend, River Blue," said Carlee. She was anxious to give her mother the cover story of how Max invited me to the party. "He's new to our school. He'll be playing football with Max, so Max thought it would be a good idea for him to meet more of the kids in our grade. I was just showing him some of the property."

  I worried that Carlee had volunteered too much information, but Mrs. Summers was pleasant. "Good to meet you, River. I hope you're enjoying the party."

  "Yes, ma'am, I am, and it's nice to meet you too. Your home is awesome," I said. The woman acted too pleasant to have seen what Carlee and I were doing, but the way she raked her eyes up and down me, lessened my confidence. I began to sweat and worry that she was suspicious of Carlee walking alone with me.

  Mrs. Summers didn't help my nerves when I saw something change in her expression. She stared directly into my eyes as if she would begin interrogating me at any moment. I saw that Carlee also noticed the sudden change that made both of us uncomfortable.

  The woman spoke before I fainted from holding my breath. "River, is it possible that I met you or perhaps met your parents somewhere? You look so familiar, but I can't place you."

  "I'm a foster kid, and I never knew my parents. I guess you could have seen me if you picked up Carlee at cheer practice. The football team and the cheerleaders practice near each other."

  Mrs. Summers wrinkled her forehead as if she were straining to remember something that just wouldn't come to her, but she eventually relaxed. "I think you're right, dear. I believe I did see you with Max and the other boys." With a nice laugh, she made fun of herself. "River, don't ever get old, or you'll be like me and can't remember what you did yesterday."

  "Everyone does that, Mrs. Summers, not just older people, and besides, you aren't old enough for a bad memory. You don't even look old enough to be Carlee's mother, but I believe you are because I can see why she's so pretty."