Chapter Two
Six kids lived at the foster home, including me. I had been there since I was twelve, and since then, kids had moved in and out like they were a new shiny toy, but I knew it was based on how much my foster mom, Karla, could take. Sometimes, she got a bit greedier, wanted more out of whatever government check was sent her way, so she took on more kids. That’s how we had more than we had ever had before now.
You would think that to be a foster parent you would actually care about kids. But Karla had already had a few kids of her own who had skipped town and left for other things, and I think she was tired and strung-out and prone to booze and cigarettes. Her husband had left her maybe a year or two before I had arrived. I could never really get the timeline right, but she was basically a husk of what she been before. I had once found a photograph of her from earlier days. In the photo, she held her youngest baby while her eldest bounced on the bed beside them. She grinned and her eyes were bright and she looked like she was about to laugh. Since I had moved in four years ago, I hadn’t seen Karla laugh genuinely. I had no idea where her husband had run off to. But he had been their main breadwinner. And now, Karla made her money the good old fashioned way, bringing several needy and destitute children into her home and making the government pay for it.
Normally when I got back from the gym, Karla was mid-way through her third or fourth glass of wine. I found her on the front porch with her best friend, Brenda. Both smoked cigarettes and gossiped non-stop about the neighbors. It was actually impressive how much they could say to each other without seeming to grow bored.
“There she is, my little gymnast—my little dreamer,” Karla rasped as I walked up.
“Hey, Brenda. Hey Karla,” I answered and gave them a smile.
“She never calls me mom the way I want her to,” Karla shot.
“Where’s Jeffrey?” I asked.
“He was napping last I saw,” Karla replied and pointed to the door. “You gonna feed him his dinner?”
The past week, Karla had actually forgotten to feed the one-year-old several times, and I had just worked the feeding into my own schedule. I grunted, nodding yes and hurried inside. Karla had stuck a crib in the living room so that she could watch her TV shows and keep Jeffrey all caged up. When I entered, he was standing up in his crib, blinking at me. His eyes were all heavy with exhaustion, but he wore a smile on his little face.
The other kids were all home, too. Heather, aged four, and Hannah, aged five, were both out on the back porch, playing in the little crooked playhouse that Karla had picked up at a garage sale recently. The girls were obsessed with it, so it was a great purchase—one of Karla’s smarter decisions.
Zach, aged eight, and Tyler, aged nine, were in the TV room watching a cartoon. Both of them stood up and stared at the screen like zombies. When I walked in, they hardly noticed me. I clapped my hands and Tyler kind of blinked my way and Zach mumbled, “Hey, Rooney.” But it was obvious that their attention for me was scheduled after the show.
“Whatever, boys,” I said. “Did she feed you dinner?”
“We had chicken nuggets,” Zach answered.
“And the girls?” I asked.
“They had hot dogs,” he returned.
Phew. Finally, something went right today. All the kids, except little Jeff, had been fed and taken care of. I lifted Jeffrey out of his crib and cradled him against my body. His warmth was almost intoxicating. He buzzed his lips and talked to me in his own way as I heated up his baby food. With every single step, I felt like my stomach dropped, and I struggled to breathe as my thoughts went back to my trainer. I had done what I had never imagined I would do. I would be taking a break from Jeanine.
But god, it didn’t mean I wanted to quit. I was forced to. It just meant I had to focus on money for a few weeks. Focus on paying her back. I didn’t like the thought of owing anyone anything or working myself into some kind of hole. Jeanine had to understand that, right? After knowing me for so long?
The microwave beeped. I took out the food and stirred it up and then tasted it myself to make sure it wasn’t too hot. Jeffrey’s thick red hair curled around my straight black hair, which was a super contrast. I whispered a promise to him that I had made every day for the past few weeks. “I’m going to find you a better home, baby Jeff. You don’t deserve this.”
I’d been resistant. After all, I had grown to really love Jeff. I think I understood the beauty of being a mother and being needed and all that. But now that I had to either work extra shifts at the diner, or grab a second job, plus study for my sophomore exam and keep training alone, there was no way I could keep up with little Jeff. I imagined his sleepless nights or days when Karla had forgotten to feed him. The other kids could speak for themselves, and they had each other. Jeff just couldn’t; he was just too young.
I fed Jeff and he had finally passed out, so I laid him gently in his crib. I asked Tyler and Zach to turn down the volume on the TV to make sure Jeffrey would get enough rest. They did so begrudgingly. I wanted to explain to them that Jeffrey was a helpless baby; that we all had to do our best to make sure he was all right. But I was too fucking tired to try and explain.
Karla came back inside after Brenda went home. I was stretching out on the floor, and my mind was elsewhere—on Jeanine, on the diner, and on all the things I couldn’t change. Karla made a quesadilla in the microwave and popped open a beer. She glared down at me and asked if I’d fed Jeffrey. I said I had. Then, she asked if I had retaken my sophomore test yet.
“No,” I said. “I think it’s like next week or something. I have to recheck with my tutor,” I said, looking up at her. Her hair was a tousled mess and it looked like she hadn’t even showered today at all.
“Remember that you have to pass it. I can sign you up for public school whenever I want,” Karla threatened.
She loved to toss around the fact that she was my guardian. She adored it. It was like her only power move over me. I never reminded her of the times when she got so damn drunk that I had to help her to bed. I never forced her to recall when I had found her asleep next to her own vomit on the back porch.
“I’m going to pass and I’m going to keep doing gymnastics,” I told her. My voice broke a little.
“Good luck, my little Olympic champion,” Karla said sarcastically. “I hope all your dreams come true.”
Fuck you.
God, I wanted to say it to her. But her house was the only home I’d had for years. I had a tiny room at the base of the stairs, close enough to Jeffrey’s crib to make sure he was all right. It was also next door to the dining room-turned-bedroom, where the two little girls slept. Upstairs, the boys had their own bedroom. They knew that after lights out, they had to be fully quiet. If they were caught talking, Karla raced into their bedroom, screeching and waking up the rest of the house. She terrified them, I think. Hell, she terrified me, too.
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, I sat on the edge of my bed and just listened to the night. We lived in a rough little neighborhood, where it wasn’t uncommon to hear gunshots. There had been multiple break-ins, not that anybody had anything of value around there, and usually, like tonight, there were stray dogs howling at nothing in particular. I shivered, although it was steamy hot and our air conditioner never did much of anything. I checked my phone, a little brick thing that I had actually found in the gym lost and found. Jeanine had texted me just once to say, “Keep thinking about it. I don’t want you to lose ground.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. I literally had no idea what to do and I really had no one to give me advice on my next move.
Just then, Jeffrey broke into tears. He yelped and cried and sounded like an injured animal. I rushed into the living room and lifted him into me. Immediately, I knew there was something wrong. Jeffrey was piping hot with a fever.
“No, baby. No. Don’t do this to me,” I whispered, not like it was his fault. “Come on.”
I got him to drink some water, and I splayed a lit
tle washrag over his tiny forehead. For several minutes, his screeches felt like needles through my ears and into my brain. Finally, he started to calm a bit, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon. I stayed up with him, cradling and rocking him against me for the next three hours. He drank water and occasionally, he would gaze up at me with lost little eyes. It felt like I was the only creature on the planet, or maybe we were the only two creatures who spoke the same language—ones that wound up together accidentally by mistake.
I wished he could understand what I said. I wished I could give him what he needed to be pain-free. Slowly, his eyes closed and he whimpered as he fell asleep. I kissed his cheek and prayed that he would remain asleep. A glance at the clock on the oven told me it was just past three in the morning. I had tutoring at eight in the morning, and after that, I would head somewhere to put in as many practice hours as I could take. Sometimes, when money was tight, or I was anxious, I headed to the little playground outside the kids’ elementary school. I could flip and balance and stretch out there, without anyone breaking my concentration. I guess, if I couldn’t pay for Jeanine or the gym for a while, that was my only option.
I crept over to Jeffrey’s crib and laid him across the crisp white sheet, which I had washed and pressed into place just the day before. I made a mental note to change the sheets the next day since I was pretty sure that’s what you were meant to do with ill babies. God, there was so much about this life I didn’t understand. I had briefly flirted about actually adopting Jeffrey once I was an adult and able to stand out on my own two feet, away from Karla’s. But the thought of that meant entertaining thoughts of abandoning gymnastics and that all-out destroyed me just thinking about it.
I stayed up a little while after that. I put the television on its lowest volume and slid an old VHS tape into the player. We were probably the only house in all of Denver that still owned a VHS player, but Karla refused to get rid of it because she had all these old soap operas on VHS that she liked to watch in the middle of the day while chain-smoking. These were the kinds of things I never told anyone about my life—not Jeanine or Marcia. It all sounded too fucking sad and my reality was hard enough without people’s pity.
I fast-forwarded to the floor routine of the Olympic team from twenty years ago, the one that included Theo’s dad, Thomas. In the video, Thomas was just as handsome as Theo currently was; tall and muscular, wide-shouldered with dark blonde hair. He beamed as he stood next to his other teammates. I knew all their names by heart since this particular American men’s team was often talked about as the best of the best. There was Thomas Everton, Theo’s father—the current billionaire owner of several breweries across the state of Colorado. Then, there was Mike Atherton, Quintin Cottrill, Rudy Eyser, and Peter Staton. That year, Theo’s father had been slated to win the gold on the balance beam, but Rudy Eyser had snuck up on him and won it instead.
Rudy Eyser was the only member of the team twenty years before who had actually stayed with the sport. He had been raised in Denver, like Thomas and Theo and I, before going up to train in Washington, ultimately starting his own school—akin to the Denver Top-Level Athletics Academy. Now, he was regarded as one of the best gymnastic judges in the world. He frequently worked as a judge at the Olympic trials. Rudy Eyser was like a God in the Gymnastic world. I stared at him, my eyes beady and feeling so fatigued. I couldn’t help myself as I took in his features like I was in a trance—his jet-black hair, bright green eyes and the way he would do a killer backflip. He was one of the gate-keepers between all gymnasts and their biggest life-goal.
Not like I would ever make it that far, anyway. There were too many factors at play. I had no money for one. I guess that was the biggest obstacle. It was the only one necessary between me and my larger than life dreams.
Luckily, Jeffrey’s fever broke in the morning. I told Karla about how sick he had been and she grunted a ‘thanks’ before popping a bottle into his mouth. She leered at me and said, “You look exhausted, little gymnast. There are dark circles under your eyes.”
I tried to push this from my mind as I headed off to see my tutor. We met at the Denver library and staggered through pre-Calculus, English lit, and a bit of Civil War history before breaking at noon. When I left, I thought I was going to vomit from how tired I was. Again, Jeanine had texted me, demanding to know my answer. Was I going to really quit her training? But I just turned off my phone and shoved it in my pocket. I had to focus on everything at the moment.
That afternoon, I headed to the playground outside the elementary school to try out my own version of ‘personal’ training. Admittedly, it was easy to just put myself through a few of the basic routines that Jeanine had had me do over and over, but I didn’t feel pushed. I really needed that constant, nagging voice in my head from Jeanine. The one that told me if I didn’t fight for what I wanted, there was no way anyone would hand it to me.
But I kept going. When the muscles in my arms became tired, I ran laps around the edge of the playground. Sweat dripped down my spine and drenched my shorts. Everything in me demanded that I go home, that I collapse on my bed and give it a rest for the day. But as the sun began to dip lower over the surrounding mountains, casting them in a beautiful rose color, I stopped running at the edge of the parking lot and found Jeanine right there in front of me, wearing another one of her tracksuits and just staring at me with this incredulous glint in her eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
I gasped and gripped my knees and panted for a minute. She just waited. If there was one thing you could say about Jeanine, it was that she could be patient. She could sweat you out.
“I’m training,” I finally told her, although we both knew how pathetic it sounded. I was literally surrounded by bright yellow and red playground equipment.
“Mm-hmm—looks super professional. I bet you’ll get into Nationals in no time like this,” she said and shook her head in disappointment.
“Listen, Jeanine; I’m just trying to stay afloat...” I stammered.
She didn’t speak for a moment. Maybe I had made everything too heavy already. I stood up to my full height and just looked at her. The nearest road was about a half-mile away, and it felt like we were in a relative desert, the ground brown and brittle around us.
“I wanted to tell you that I sent your video to Denver Athletics Academy,” Jeanine said suddenly.
I balked at her. There was no way in hell that I could go to Denver Athletics. That was where the best of the best in the surrounding states went. And although I could compete with those kids, it wasn’t like I could fucking pay for it. It was the place millionaire’s kids went to train and study—like a perfect balance of academics and athletics. And a lot of the Olympic team was chosen straight from Denver Athletics.
“That’s a funny joke, Jeanine,” I scoffed.
“It’s not a joke. I sent the video over a month ago, and they just wrote me to say that you’ve been chosen for an audition,” Jeanine said, taking a step closer.
“Bullshit,” I tried to call her bluff.
“You’re always cursing at me. I told you that I hate it,” Jeanine returned, looking more annoyed now.
“There’s just no way in hell that I could be ready for an audition at Denver Athletics,” I told her, fully ignoring what she said about the cursing thing.
“You’ve been training non-stop since you were a kid,” Jeanine said, trying to knock some sense into me. “And with me for over two years now. When are you going to bite the bullet and actually go for it, Rooney? This is your moment. You can’t give up right now. It’s the breaking point.”
I just gaped at her. My exhaustion from the night before folded over me like a blanket. She looked at me sympathetically and said, “I can see how tired you are.”
“I stayed up all night with Jeffrey,” I explained and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “He was really sick.”
Jeanine sighed and stared at the ground. She clic
ked her tongue. “There’s no way you’ll ever be able to go to Nationals if you stay in that house, Rooney. The only option you have is Denver Athletics. You can throw yourself fully into this sport, the way you’ve always wanted to.”
“But there’s literally no way I could pay for it,” I debated. I kicked my foot against the dirt in frustration, making dust spew up. I knew she was right, but it just wasn’t a reality. Financially anyway.
“They have scholarships,” Jeanine offered. “I looked into it—just in case.”
“You know who trains there?” I asked. “Theo Everton. Freakin’ Poppy Binford. Seventeen magazine has put her on the cover of their magazine-like every single year since I was eleven years old. It’s always been known that she’ll go to the Olympics.”
“I’ve watched her tape, just like you,” Jeanine said, studying me. “You have the potential to beat her—maybe not yet, but you have more heart and you certainly have more to lose.”
Tears sprung to my eyes. Everything she was saying made sense because she was right. Jeanine had never been so frank with me before. Actually, comparing me to the world’s current best female gymnast? That seemed insane. I coughed once and turned my head as my thoughts raced through my head. I suddenly felt dizzy.
“Just say you’ll train with me for two more weeks, and then go to the audition,” Jeanine pleaded with me. Her voice was soft like she didn’t want to scare me away.
“Jeanine, we’re back to the same problem,” I stammered. “I can’t pay you. I have almost no money left.”
Jeanine gave a heavy sigh. “I added up the numbers. My finances, everything,” she said. “I’ll be good. I can hack it for a few weeks. You’re worth it to me. What we do over the next two weeks could make all the difference between the life you’re living now and the one you want to build. You understand that, don’t you?”
It was fucking difficult to understand. Actually, it was seemingly-impossible. I wanted to roll my eyes, to turn on my heels and run far away from Jeanine, from Denver, and from my past. But where the hell would that put me?
Out for Blood Page 2
