Secrets On the Clock

by Nicole Disney

  “It’s not just anything. Those things kill you.”

  Deon rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair again. “My mom send you up here to tell me to go to school?”

  “Everyone wants you in school, Deon.” Jenna sat on the edge of his bed. “Let’s talk about that bruise on your back first, though.”

  “You see how my mom is acting all sweet now?”

  Jenna paused at the subject change. “Yeah.”

  “’Cause she feels bad. That’s why.”

  “Did she do that?”

  Deon looked out the window. “Nah.”

  “Someone she invited over here?”

  “Nah.”

  “What do you mean then, Deon?”

  “Nothing. She’s just always nice after I get hurt.”

  “How’d you get hurt?”

  “Basketball.”

  “That’s it.” Jenna stood up. “I’m pulling you two.”

  “What?” Deon’s focus snapped over to Jenna, his tough-guy demeanor shattered. Danielle studied Jenna’s face, trying to figure out if it was a bluff. She certainly had enough evidence to pull them. Danielle would be relieved to see her do it, but she knew Jenna didn’t truly want to. And at the same time, if it was a bluff it was a damn good one.

  “You want to play games with me, Deon, I’m pulling you,” Jenna said. “This is not our agreement. I said I’d let you call the shots as long as you were honest with me and as long as you understood certain things are unacceptable.”

  “I can’t be honest with you anymore with her here!” Deon gestured at Danielle.

  Danielle looked at Jenna, silently asking if she should leave, but Jenna didn’t even look at her.

  “What makes you think anything has changed just because she’s here?” Jenna asked.

  “I know you can’t be breaking any rules in front of little miss new girl.”

  “I don’t make decisions I can’t live with, Deon. Our arrangement isn’t a secret. If the day comes that I have to explain it, I can, but I can’t explain leaving you here with bruises that came from God knows where. I can’t do that to you. I can’t do it to Raylon. I agreed to let you decide if you should live here or not because I could trust you, but if that’s gone the deal’s gone. So, it’s your turn to make a decision, Deon, what’s it going to be?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “You going to tell me the truth?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, start with the bruise on your face last week at the basketball court.”

  Deon’s head bowed as he looked at the floor. Danielle leaned forward, staring at Deon’s face in suspense. He looked so strong next to the paper-thin desk that supported his muscled arm, but she knew it was an illusion. He wasn’t old and wise; he was sad. His muscles weren’t bulging; he was cut because he was too thin. “Mama’s boyfriend slapped me,” he finally said.

  Danielle knew her reaction was visible and tried to wrangle it in, but Deon’s focus was on Jenna, and she was made of stone.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Him and Mama got in an argument. She told him to leave and he wouldn’t, so I told him to go, and he slapped me.”

  “Did she call the police?”

  “No.”

  “What did she do?”

  “He left after he hit me,” Deon said. “That’s when she got the new door.”

  “And what about your back?” Jenna asked.

  “It was just Raylon.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Raylon got pissed and threw the PlayStation. He didn’t even mean to hit me. It was an accident.”

  “He didn’t mean to hit you?”

  Deon looked at the floor again and scratched the back of his neck. “He was trying to throw it at Mama.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she made him go to a tutor.”

  Jenna raked her hand down her face and sighed. “And why do you think he doesn’t want to go to school, Deon?”

  “Come on, that’s not fair.”

  “He thinks the world of you, Deon. Wants to be just like you. You think it doesn’t affect him when you refuse to go?”

  Deon stared at his feet. “If I go back to school will you let us stay?”

  Jenna looked disarmed by the question and glanced at Danielle for the first time. Danielle was surprised by the conflict she saw in Jenna. Everything Jenna said she said with complete confidence and conviction. Danielle had never seen uncertainty in her face. Jenna looked back to Deon.

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re safe here, Deon. I can’t let people hit you.”

  “They’re not,” he said. “Raylon doesn’t count, and that guy is gone.”

  “And what if he comes back?”

  “Mama won’t let him. She hates him now. Honest.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear! Ms. Thompson, please don’t take us away. Raylon needs me. He’ll go berserk without me.”

  “Deon, look at me,” Jenna said. “I know you love Raylon, and I know you want him with you, but I know you don’t want some man hitting him. If he hit you, he’ll hit Raylon. Did this guy really stop coming around?”

  “Yes, Ms. Thompson. I swear.”

  Jenna stared at Deon for several long seconds before she finally took a breath again.

  “You get your butt back in school,” she said.

  “Okay.” He nodded. “I will.”

  Jenna snatched the pack of cigarettes off his desk. “And no more of this shit,” she said. “Crazy.”

  Deon cracked a smile. “Thanks, Jenna.”

  When they exited the room, Raylon was crouched in the frame of his bedroom door down the hall. The frame’s white paint was chipped, and the brown wood exposed beneath was tearing in strips. Jenna crouched by him. He looked as small as a cat and like he was on the verge of tears.

  “Are you going to take me away for throwing the PlayStation?” he asked.

  “No, honey,” Jenna said. “Let’s not do that again though, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you scared to be here?” Jenna asked.

  Raylon shook his head. “Deon doesn’t let anything bad happen.”

  Jenna nodded and touched his head before walking down the stairs. Ladona was waiting at the bottom. She looked paralyzed.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Deon says he’ll go back to school,” Jenna said.

  Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “Just like that?”

  “Yes,” Jenna said. “But you call me if he stops going again.”

  “I sure will. Thank you, Ms. Thompson.”

  “He can’t have bruises again, Ms. Clark. I need you to understand that. Whoever needs to go for that to happen, they need to go.”

  Ladona looked Jenna in the eye in silence for what felt like an eternity. She seemed afraid to answer, afraid to argue, afraid to acknowledge it, afraid even to breathe. Finally, she nodded, her round, soft face taking a tone of sincerity and cooperation Danielle hadn’t seen before.

  “I wouldn’t let that son of a bitch back in here to save my own life,” she said. “You have my word.”

  “You have to call the police if he tries. You have to protect them, Ladona, or I’ll have to.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’re not really leaving them there, are you?” Danielle asked.

  Jenna felt the air squeezing out of her chest. Her mind was scrambling in a million directions, and she couldn’t even start to chase one thought before another darted through her mind. She took a breath and started the car.

  “Yes.”

  Danielle’s hand sprang into her vision and turned the car back off. When Jenna looked to the passenger seat Danielle was staring at her.

  “You do that a lot, don’t you?” she asked. “Put the car in park, turn it off?”

  “No,” Danielle said. “I don’t. But you said after, it’s after.”

  Jenna sighed. “Coffee.”

  “What?”

>   “Let’s go get coffee, and I swear we’ll talk.”

  Danielle eyed her, but finally nodded. Jenna knew stalling wouldn’t work forever, but she needed more time. She wasn’t sure how much to say, and it was a conflict she wasn’t used to. She usually knew the exact distance she wanted people at, but Danielle was confusing. If Danielle disagreed with her decisions strongly enough she could really affect Deon and Raylon, and the promise Jenna made to them. It was safer to tell her as little as possible, but some strange, untrustworthy part of her was bizarrely possessed to tell Danielle everything.

  They ordered their drinks in silence and found a place to sit on the couches in the back corner of the cozy coffee shop, across from one another. Danielle took a sip of her drink and waited quietly. Jenna felt her heart start to race again as she prepared to speak.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” she said.

  “Why does Deon keep saying you break the rules for him?” Danielle asked. “Do you?”

  “I use my discretion.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Jenna.”

  Jenna felt a tingle go down her spine hearing Danielle say her name. She found it difficult to hold Danielle’s strong and steady gaze. She felt Danielle’s hand on her knee, and her head snapped up.

  “You can trust me,” Danielle said. “Just tell me what’s going on. If you’re ever going to turn this case over to me I need to know.”

  Jenna pictured Danielle checking in with the boys alone. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the case would be over quickly if that ever happened. Danielle would pull the boys out of the house, separated or not. Paula could tell Jenna it was time to put Danielle in charge of the Clarks any day, and if she didn’t do something to change Danielle’s mind, that would be their fate. It didn’t need to be about trust or attraction or closeness. It was her job to explain things to Danielle.

  “I don’t always record everything I see over there,” Jenna said. “That’s what he means.”

  “Like what?”

  Jenna sighed and searched for an example. “Deon got in a fight with another kid once. I didn’t report it. Things like that. Things that could tip the scales when they shouldn’t.”

  Danielle seemed to think it over. “The bruise last week?”

  Jenna felt her insides clench up, wanting to hold back, but she had to be honest. She shook her head.

  “You didn’t put it in the report?” Danielle’s face plainly fought a battle with her expression, and Jenna couldn’t stop the chuckle that came out of her.

  “You need to work on that,” she said. “You can’t look shocked when the kids tell you something awful. Scares them quiet.”

  “I don’t understand,” Danielle said. “I know you care about them. Why would you cover that up? Don’t you want to stop it?”

  “Of course!” Jenna felt her first surge of anger. “I care about those boys like family.”

  Danielle’s expression was soft. “So explain it to me.”

  Jenna sighed and touched her face, awakening the tenderness where her mom slapped her. She fought the emotion that came with the pain. “I just understand them,” Jenna said. “And they want to stay there.”

  Danielle waited a beat, then sat back in her chair again. “That’s it? They want to be there? They’re kids, Jenna, they don’t know any better. They don’t know any alternatives. They don’t know what life can be like. Aren’t you the one who said sometimes they don’t know it’s for the best until they’re older?”

  “Yes, I did.” Jenna sighed. “But it’s more complicated than that. Kids know way more than they’re given credit for. They know what foster care is. They know they may be separated. Deon knows he may or may not like his foster family. He knows what Raylon’s life will be like with his aunt. They know their mom is sick. He’s old enough to see the big picture. I wouldn’t let Raylon make the calls, but Deon…”

  “But you can’t possibly put that big of a decision on his shoulders. It’s too much.”

  “It’s not all on him. I’m not expecting him to make the decision. I’m just making their opinions worth something. I’m over there all the time monitoring them very closely. If I need to take them out of there, I will.”

  “But Deon has been hurt twice already,” Danielle said. “Where’s the line?”

  “I believe what Deon told me today. Do you?”

  Danielle blinked in surprise. “Yeah,” she finally said. “I believe him. But you didn’t know the story yet when you decided not to report it last week. I know you didn’t buy that basketball crap.”

  “No,” Jenna said. “I didn’t, but I trust Deon.”

  “How can you possibly say that when he was obviously lying?”

  “He just needed a little time. I knew he’d tell me. I knew he’d make the right call.”

  “But he’s just a kid! Anything could have happened.”

  Jenna watched Danielle fight her rising anger and made sure her voice didn’t change as she answered. “I know he’s just a kid, but I also knew he’d make the right choice. I know what a kid his age is capable of understanding, especially one as bright as he is.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Because I grew up that way,” Jenna said. Adrenaline jolted through her and her palms started sweating. She forced herself to look at Danielle even though everything in her screamed to shut up. “I was Deon,” she said. “And no one would listen to me. No one cared what a kid had to say.”

  Danielle was visibly shaken as she tracked the subject change. She looked from Jenna to the floor, then to her face again.

  “Remember I told you my mom is schizophrenic?” Jenna said. Danielle nodded. “Her symptoms began when I was going into my teens. She lost her job. Soon we were poor. CPS got involved. They clearly wanted to take us away, but that would have most likely meant my sister and I would be separated. I wanted to talk to them about it, but it was just a checklist for them. It was yes and no answers, and if there were a certain number of yeses, that was that. I never felt like I could tell the truth without that being the end. The lengths my sister and I went to in order to keep that from happening…” Jenna had to look away thinking about Callie, about her scarred face and the way she lived to hide it from the world.

  “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

  Jenna couldn’t look at Danielle. She didn’t want to see pity in her face. “All I had to go on was what my mom told me, and that was skewed by paranoia. If someone had explained things to me, not just written off my opinion because I was young, I might have told the truth. There has to be a safe space for conversation, or you’ll never get anywhere. I could have told them what they needed to know, but they couldn’t see past their little survey. I might have made different decisions if they had. Better ones. Everything could have been different.”

  “You think the surveys are too rigid?”

  “I think the surveys are a tool and should be treated that way. They don’t do the job for you. They don’t tell the whole story. A kid that knows you’re going by the survey knows to just lie until you leave. That’s how kids in bad situations get left there, not from what I’m doing.”

  Danielle sighed. “I want to agree with you, Jenna, I do. I’m just not sure. You did what you set out to do with Deon. He trusts you and he told you the truth. But now what? Now your hands are tied honoring that trust, and he’s still there.”

  “They’re not there because my hands are tied. I never promised Deon I’d do whatever he wants no matter what. I just promised his voice would mean something, that I would listen to the whole story instead of freaking out the second he tells me something scary,” Jenna said. “He knows if I take them away one day it will be because it’s what’s truly best for them. He knows I won’t do it lightly. I’m not ignoring what’s going on in that house just because I didn’t report it. I made him tell me the truth, and now that he has I think they’re better where they are. That asshole who slapped him is gone. They both said so and I believe they meant i
t. I hate that it happened, Danielle. Trust me, I do, but getting slapped isn’t the worst thing that can happen to him. Losing Raylon is.”

  When Jenna finally dared to look up again, Danielle was staring into her.

  “And you know that firsthand.” Danielle touched Jenna’s cheek where she knew she must be developing a bruise. Danielle touched so softly she barely felt it, and Jenna turned into Danielle’s hand, her warmth and softness. Her stomach twisted, and she pulled back. She couldn’t let Danielle touch her and expect to keep her head about her. Danielle was patient but curious. “Your mom did that?” she finally asked.

  “Yes,” Jenna said. “She’s sick; she can’t help it.”

  Danielle’s brow somehow became even softer. “That doesn’t mean you should have to take it.”

  “I can’t put her away,” Jenna said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “How often does this happen?”

  “Not often.” Jenna could see Danielle didn’t believe her. “In clusters,” she amended. “She’s fine until she comes off the meds, then it’s a bit of a free-for-all until we can get her back on them. She’s going to need a shot. They last much longer, long enough for the medicine to do its job. Getting her back on pills is a losing battle. They have to accumulate in her system again to work, and getting her to take pills long enough for that to happen while she’s in this state is pretty much impossible. But getting her to a doctor isn’t much easier. It’s just going to be rough for a while, but she’ll stabilize.”

  Danielle nodded solemnly. “Jenna, if you ever need help, or a break, anything, you can call me.”

  Jenna felt sucked inside Danielle’s stare. She couldn’t pull away. They were both leaning toward one another. They’d inched to the edge of their chairs so much now they were only a foot apart. Jenna wanted to touch her. Her entire body screamed for it. She gently cupped Danielle’s cheek. When Danielle’s eyes fluttered shut at her touch, Jenna let her fingers slowly slide into Danielle’s impossibly soft hair. She was drawn to Danielle, and she felt powerless against it. There were inches between them now, screaming at her to end the distance. She knew she wouldn’t be able to fight it another second, and a rush of panic streamed through her. She pulled back. What the hell was she doing? She was going to lose everything if she didn’t stop.