by Heidi Ayarbe
I still can’t believe I forgot to pack a toothbrush.
Like that matters anymore.
I go back out to the front desk.
“I’m Jim. You need to eat. And we need to talk.” Jim takes me to the kitchen. “This is an exception. There is no eating here outside of assigned hours.” He points to the shelter schedule and looks me up and down. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I don’t remember.”
He hands me a cup of broth. “Start with this. At dinner, maybe you can have toast, too. Five o’clock.”
I sip the broth.
“No weapons; if you want to stay, you’re going to have to enroll in the community volunteer program; and a kid your age needs to be studying to get her GED; no smoking, drugs, or alcohol are tolerated; curfew’s at eight o’clock at night; during meals, you get your own food and you clean up your mess. We have circle time with the psychologist after dinner. You don’t have to talk, but you’re expected to be there. Any questions?”
“Do you, um, have to report me—” I start to ask.
“We’re here to keep kids like you off the streets. If we report you, you won’t come. We don’t report. You’re off the streets. You might be smart enough to get a diploma and get the hell out of this mess you’re in. Got it?”
I nod, and he serves me another bowl of broth—this time with some noodles in it. “My friend?” I ask.
“At St. Andrew’s. That’s all I know.”
We sit in silence at the table until I eat everything. He serves me a third bowl. “Take it easy.”
I slurp it down. It tastes like heaven.
“Are you planning on staying?” he asks.
I nod.
He hands me a folder. “You can get a job at these places. They work with us. It’s more like an internship. They pay transportation and give you a meal. In return for volunteering your services, you get to stay here. Off. The. Streets.”
Nothing could be better, I think. I browse through the pages and find Boise Public Library. “I’d like to work here.”
He nods. He goes and gets a letter. “You plan on telling them your real name?”
I smile. He doesn’t realize that I have about twenty. “Sure,” I say.
“Sure,” he says.
The librarian at the reception desk smiles and says, “I’m Miss Foley. We’d love to have you here,” then goes into a spiel about being responsible, on time, respecting library property, blah blah blah. But she’s nice. Real nice. And she sends me to work in the computer lab the first day. She comes back after a while. “I can tell you know what you’re doing,” she says. She pauses. “You’re different from most of our volunteers. I don’t get why you’re here.”
“I think there are lots like me out there,” I finally say. “Too many.”
She stares at me. She sees me. It’s like somebody really sees me for the first time in months.
We set it up so I work in the afternoons, study in the evenings, and spend my mornings outside Nicole’s window, crouched in some twig bushes. The days get shorter, colder—the nights longer. Billie always wants to hear my story: Why I ran away, what happened on the streets, blah blah blah. I don’t really want to tell it. She’s not pushy. I guess she’s used to finding broken kids and not knowing how to piece them back together.
After a week of volunteering at the library, I bring the box. “Miss Foley, I have to find somebody. Do you think I can come in early to do some research?”
Miss Foley looks at the letters in the box. “Absolutely.” Then she leaves me alone. She always gives me space. It’s a good job.
Today I stand outside Nicole’s window and put my hand against the pane, hoping she’ll know that she’s not alone. It’s weird. I haven’t done a procedure or hypothesis since, well, for a long time.
And I feel better. No more plans or procedures—just living day-by-day, waiting for things to come. Because that’s all I can do now. Wait. Wait for her to wake up.
I clap my hands against my thighs. The clothes from the shelter aren’t nearly as warm as I wish they were. The doctors and Billie say I’ll warm up when I gain weight.
“She knows you’re here, you know.”
I stand up from the bushes. “Oh. Um sorry. I wasn’t doing anything. Just…sorry.”
“You’re here every day.” The woman wraps a scarf around her neck and zips her coat up.
“Yeah. I—” I turn to leave.
“Don’t go. She needs you.”
I stare at her. She has kind eyes.
“Tomorrow my shift starts at six o’clock in the morning. She could use a friend. Maybe you can go and talk to her.”
“I’d like that,” I say.
“You okay?” she asks.
I’m getting a little tired of people asking me that. But I nod. I’m going to see my family.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
I get to the hospital before six o’clock and wait. She pulls up in a hybrid and shuffles down the frozen walk toward the doors. She looks my way and waves me over. I follow her.
“I’m Catalina.” She pulls back her long black hair into a ponytail and slips on a white coat.
“’Tis the season, Dr. Ramirez,” a man says, passing Catalina in the hallway, handing her a bunch of charts. “Curtain one, alcohol poisoning. Curtain two, salmonella—dumb bastards made homemade eggnog. Every Goddamn year,” he whispers.
Catalina shrugs.
“Curtain six”—the man looks at the chart—“you don’t even wanna know.”
“Ho-ho-ho,” Catalina says dryly and flips through the patients’ charts. “Ewww,” she says.
“Yep. Told you so. See you tomorrow.” He winks. “Happy Rounds to you, Ramirez.”
Catalina hands me a hot chocolate.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Follow me.” She turns on her heel. We push past the chaos of the emergency room and walk down a quiet hallway. “Technically only family is allowed in. So you’re family, okay?” she says.
“Yes,” I say. I don’t even hesitate.
She leads me down the hall. “She can hear, you know.”
“Will she get better?” I ask.
She looks at the chart. “She’s emerging. She’s starting to respond to things we say and physical touch. We hope it’s today or tomorrow. The sooner she wakes up, the better.”
“After that?” I ask. “Where does she go?”
“All the kids…” Her voice trails off. “All the kids they find in the Garden are taken to Willow Springs on suicide watch. These cases are pretty sad,” she says. “She has no family to contact.”
I hold Nicole’s postcards in my hand.
“Come on.” Catalina leads me to Nicole’s bedside and then leaves me there.
“Hey, Nicole.”
She looks like she’s just in a deep sleep. I look at the window and can see where my nose and fingers left prints on the pane.
I lay my head on Nicole’s bed and close my eyes, pretending I’m her—stuck in silence. I listen to the sounds of the hospital: footsteps patter in a distant hallway, machines beep, telephones ring, somebody breathes heavily, somebody says a prayer.
The room smells like ammonia and cinnamon spice incense. Some carolers jingle-bell down the hallways. I don’t think anybody should allow carolers into a hospital at Christmastime. It’s pretty depressing.
“Hi,” I say. “I wasn’t around for the first few days because I fell asleep. Big surprise, right? You’d think I have some weird sleep disorder.”
The carolers stand in the doorway and belt out “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen,” jingling bells and wearing stupid Santa hats. When they finish, the other patients offer them quiet applause.
“You know, Christmas was probably in September, not December. In the year seven B.C.—the year most people think Jesus was born—Saturn and Jupiter moved to within a degree of each other when he was born. It’s only ever happened three times in the history of the world. I mean, it’s probably happene
d a lot more, but only three times since man has started counting. Anyway, if we take all the facts, it looks like Christmas was mid-September.”
Silence.
“I’m volunteering at the library. In the afternoons.” I sigh. “I kinda needed access to computers and stuff.”
Silence.
“I’m studying at this alternative ed high school. The shelter doesn’t give us much of a choice. We’ve got to volunteer and study to stay. So my classmates are mostly pregnant teens, ex-felons, and runaways. Probably the only place I’d have a real shot at homecoming queen. Funny. I don’t miss high school. And at this school, everybody’s pretty laid-back. It’s kinda nice to be anonymous. It’s nice to be Jeopardy.
“I think I got on some homeschoolers’ list, though, by accident. Last week, the Boise homeschooler association invited me and my ‘guardian’ to an ice-cream social. They want to make sure the homeschooled kids don’t come out all socially retarded or something. As if high school did wonders for my social skills, right?”
I pull Nicole’s blankets up and take her hand in mine. “Please,” I say. “Please wake up.”
Her hand remains limp. Lifeless.
I clear my throat. “About the postcards.” I pull out her plastic bag. “I’m sorry I lied. I just didn’t want—” What? I didn’t want her to know everything she believed in was a lie? She was bound to find out sometime. Why did I lie?
“It’s just. It’s just sometimes lies aren’t all that bad. And maybe your mom does that to give you hope.” I clear my throat. “Maybe she’s trying to make up for something. So she created a dream. Kind of like my dad with the box of stuff.”
I sit with her in silence. There’s nothing to say. Not really. “I miss you,” I finally say. “I miss your stories.” I lay my head back down on her bed and close my eyes. I listen to the evenness of her breathing and try to think back to where everything went so wrong.
Genesis, I think. It was all wrong from the beginning.
“It’s time to go.” Catalina taps my shoulder. “You can come back tomorrow—I have a six A.M. shift again.”
I squeeze Nicole’s hand and say, “It wasn’t your fault, you know. That he died.
“I’m trying to find where he is. So he just doesn’t become a John Doe, you know?” I get up to go. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“I’ve been to a synagogue, Lutheran and Methodist churches, even a Mormon temple. But they wouldn’t let me in the temple, so I sat outside and looked at it,” I say.
Nicole stares out the window. The hospital called the shelter to tell us she has woken up. And they let me skip class and volunteer work to come see her. Billie even gave me a ride.
“And the Catholic church. It’s pretty nice with its stained-glass windows.” I went to mass at St. Mary’s. People shuffled into the pews wearing elegant clothes. I tried to pray.
“I go in those places, though, and don’t feel it. I don’t feel this holy presence or like I’m more protected or loved there. I wish I could have Klon’s faith.”
Nicole pulls the blanket up, shivering. Her silence is deafening—louder than any of her nonstop monologues. I want to shake the words out of her—the stories, the mob facts, anything.
“You know I’ve come every day for the last couple of weeks. If your coma brain could remember as well as your conscious brain, you’d already know all about the rise and fall of monarchies. Sorry I bored you with social studies homework. They’re going to send you to Willow Springs—some kind of institution. When you get out of here.” I sigh. “You can’t just give up.”
It’s like Nicole’s still in a coma—her bloodshot eyes scanning the room. She looks disappointed, like she wishes she had died.
And I’m afraid for her—afraid that being stuck in a room between four white walls, she’ll give up. She’ll die.
I read Aunt Sarah’s letters to Nicole. “I know there’s something we’re missing here. Something we haven’t seen.” I carefully pick at the return address label under the lip of the box, but it’s stuck, and I’m afraid of messing it up. “Something’s here. Something obvious,” I say.
When I leave, I say, “We’ll get there, okay?”
But she just turns her back to me.
I go to the library with my box of things. I reread the letters from Aunt Sarah to Mom. Then I pull out a dried flower, staring at it. A piece of her home. I run my fingers across the faded petals and pull down a book on state symbols.
And I find it. Indian paintbrush—the state flower of Wyoming.
I borrow a magnifying glass and look at the return address stuck under the rim of the box and can make out “J—s-n—le, W-.”
Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The phone rings. And rings. On the sixth ring I’m going to hang up when she answers. “Hello?” she says, out of breath.
My throat closes up again.
“Hello?” she repeats.
“Hi,” I rasp. “Um, can I please speak to Sarah Jones?”
“Speaking.”
My hand trembles as it cradles the receiver. “Are you, um, Michelle’s sister?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Maya. Maya Aguirre,” I say.
I listen as she gasps and drops the telephone, then scrambles to pick it up. The seconds tick by.
“Hello? Maya?” she says just as my money runs out. How irritating. She probably doesn’t know how hard it is to get the cash to call.
I have found her. Auntie Em. I think about my purpose, hypothesis, procedure.
Purpose: Find Aunt Sarah
Hypothesis: If I call back collect, will she answer? I’m afraid to find out.
I realize I don’t care about making hypotheses or procedures anymore. I can’t predict what people will do, but I can control what I do. So I cradle the phone in my hand and call back collect.
“Will you accept the charges?”
“Yes,” I hear her voice. I wish I could say it sounds like Mom. But I hardly remember anything about Mom. And I realize now that I want somebody to fill in the blanks.
“Um, it’s expensive. Collect calls,” I say.
“You’re not calling from Papua New Guinea, are you?” she asks.
“Nah,” I say. “Just Boise, Idaho.”
“Then I think I can foot the bill.”
And we talk.
I go to the hospital and sit by Nicole. When it’s time to go, I say, “Nicole, they’re going to release you later this week.”
She turns to me and looks me in the eyes.
“They’re going to send you to Willow Springs. Instead of being property of Nevada, you now belong to Idaho. Do you really want that?” I ask. “So what if he’s not real? You can still go to all these places.” I pull out her postcards. “We can go. Together.”
The hospital has forced Nicole to wear gloves because she’s bitten her fingernails so low they bleed all the time. Since they have her on suicide watch, she’s not even allowed to eat her food with a fork. But she hardly eats. It’s as if she has decided to stop; stop eating; stop speaking; stop being.
I pause. “You know, I have a plan.” And I do.
The plastic bag of postcards slips from Nicole’s fingers and thunks on the floor. She stares down at it, then turns her back to me. “Nothing has ever been real,” she says, “except for these.” She points to her scars.
I pick up the postcards and throw them on her bedside table. I want to shake her. She can’t be like the rest of them. She can’t give up.
“I’ve found her,” I say. “She’s real. There’s more than those.” I motion to her scars.
Nicole turns to me, eyes blazing.
I unclasp my chain and place the locket in her hand. “Good exists, Nicole. It does. It has to.” I think about Klon and who he was. I have to find him. I have to find his mom, too. She has to know.
Good. There would be no balance if there were no good. The universe wouldn’t make sense if there wer
e no good. “Klon was good. He was the best.”
Nicole stares at the necklace in the palm of her hand, studying the faces in the faded photograph. She shakes her head. “You’d never get it—not ever.”
“Maybe not,” I say. “But I want to try.”
She turns back into the Nicole I knew in Kids Place. She has shut off. “Fuck off,” she finally says. “I’m not your social-studies humanitarian project anymore. Go find someone else to save.” She throws the necklace down, the locket flipping open. We both look at the faded photograph. Auntie Em.
Aunt Sarah.
Would she take both of us?
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
One hundred and eleven dollars. From Boise to Jackson Hole. Each. And it goes about three hundred miles out of the way because it’s some kind of weird B route. I sigh. Where am I going to get the money to pay for the trip? And I don’t think Aunt Sarah would just fork out two hundred–plus dollars for bus tickets. I wouldn’t—especially knowing where I’m coming from.
I slip back into my scientific mind so I can find a purpose—a way to get the money. And I actually have a good plan. A plan that’s easy enough to execute but will pretty much screw over, I calculate, about twenty high schoolers. And then I will be a con. I will be my dad.
I think about him. What would he do? Anything to keep me off the streets. Anything to keep me safe.
What will I do?
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Maya,” I say, and wait for “Dancing Queen.” This time, though, “Chiquitica” floods the phone line. I wonder if the Nevada prison system gets a discount on ABBA elevator music.
“Maya?”
“Dad?”
“Maya, baby.” He sighs. I picture him with a white-knuckled grip on the telephone. He chokes out the words, “How are you? Where are you? Oh my God. Are you okay? They’ve looked. And I thought I’d lost—” He can’t talk fast enough.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Kind of.” I hold on to the phone and wish I could be with him.
