Peas and Carrots (2 page)

This place reeks like coffee. Like coffee and old people, and I don't know which is worse. I packed my stuff this morning—one bag. Rena at the group home tried to get me to take some books and things, but I don't want things. If I don't own it, nobody can steal it. I can't lose what I don't have. So no things for me. I like my life to fit all in one bag. Only the clothes I chose and my sewing kit—and nothing more than that.

I've been waiting for almost forty minutes, but I don't care. There are no books, but I've got my music, and that's all I need. If I were at Stanton High with the rest of the sophomores, it would be study hall, last period before lunch, and I'd be more bored than I am now. Boredom's nothing. If you're bored, at least nobody's in your face, yelling at you, crowding you, or making you do what you don't want.

There's a desk with three chairs in front of it and a big office chair behind it. On a bookshelf in the corner there are magazines, and there's a little table with one of those wire maze things, with wooden blocks threaded on it. I wouldn't touch that for money; I read on the Internet at the library last summer that there are fecal coliform germs on computer keyboards and doorknobs and clothes people try on at the mall. Not even the pump bottle of hand sanitizer on the wall makes me want to touch anything. I hate the posters in here. What little kid smiles like that about an apple? Nobody gets that excited over apples.

The door opens, and it's not the guard checking on me this time, just some big old black lady with long cornrows and dangly earrings. Rena at the group home always says that each person we meet gives us “limitless new possibilities,” but I don't pay any attention when the lady smiles. I know some black lady has not got “limitless new possibilities” for me.

Then I see the little kid with her.

She's talking, but it's just noise, my heart's beating so hard. With sweet, smooth skin like creamy peanut butter, in a striped shirt and jeans, he's a bigger version of the baby in the picture Rena got me when I first came to the group home. He leans against the lady's leg, staring at me like I'm staring at him.

It's…he's…

He's darker than he used to be, darker than he was when he was a tiny baby and only the skin around his fingernails was even a little bit tan. I don't even know how to feel, seeing his little Charlie Brown head, bigger now. Once it held just a fringe of baby naps, just a line of raggedy curls, but now it's covered in sandy fuzz. His big old head on that little scrawny neck is the same, though. Why do babies have such big heads?

I pull out my earbuds. The black Amazon lady's
still
talking.

“…and, Austin, this is your sister. Her name is Odessa.”

“Dess,” I correct, stepping hard and loud on the end of her sentence, even while my heart pounds. Trish picked the dumbest name of the dumbest city she could find to have me in, and I'm not having some foster lady tag me with that forever. Trish is crap with names; she had another baby, Dallas, but he died. Dallas, Odessa, Austin. Three for Trish from Texas. Just as well that poor baby died. The state would have taken him, too.

“You prefer Dess? I'll remember.” Baby's foster lady—I guess that's who she is—talks like some kind of teacher, using words like “prefer.” Baby keeps staring, his little face solemn. He doesn't know me. He doesn't remember.

There's a roaring in my ears.

Foster Lady says something else, her deep brown face full of smiles, her teeth all white and straight. What's she got to look so happy about? So what if she's got good teeth? That wrap skirt looks like she stole it off a hippie and makes her fat butt a mile wide. She's a thick chick—thick and old. I can see gray hairs sticking out of her braids. Trish would never let herself get all fat like that.

Well, okay, you don't get fat on meth and black coffee. But
still.

“Hey, Defsa.”

Little man can talk! His eyes are round like his head when he looks up at me, and his teeth are like tiny white Tic Tacs in his smile.

“Defsa, come on!” He grabs my hand and tows me over to the table in the corner that's stacked with chunky building blocks. I give the foster lady a look, but she's smiling like there's nothing wrong with it. My neck relaxes a little.

“Go ahead and play,” she says, settling in a chair in front of the desk. “I've still got paperwork to get from Mrs. Farris.”

Farris is my social worker, or she was until this morning, when she blew me off. They called the house last night, and this morning they're signing me out of North Highlands into Glenn County, which doesn't make any sense. They just transferred Trish to Ironwood Vocational Center, down near LA, so we're miles apart now. Not that I care or anything—it's not like I'm some kind of mama's girl or whatever—but what's the matter with North Highlands all of a sudden? Who knows. I've got to start over with some other social worker and, instead of the group home, foster care with some big black Amazon lady. Me! I haven't been in foster care since I was eleven, and the last people kicked me back. You get this old in the system, group homes are the only ones who will take you.

“You got lotsa hair.” Baby lets go of my hand to pat at my ponytail. I need to lighten it again: it's gone back to dull brown at the roots. Rena helped me dye the tips red last year, but I cut them off.

“You've got lots of hair, too,” I tell Baby, who has forgotten about my ponytail in favor of a bucket of those fitted blocks. I sit on a too-short chair, my knees jamming up to my chest. I don't talk to Farris, not usually, but she asked me at the beginning of the summer if I needed anything. I said I wanted to see Baby. I meant just once, on a visit, but…here I am.

Not a visit. They're going to let me live with Baby.

Maybe Farris is retiring. She's old, too—even thicker and older than the foster lady. Maybe she's getting Alzheimer's; maybe she's losing her grip. That's got to be it. That's why they're doing this.

We play for maybe five minutes before Farris comes in on a blast of perfume, her heels click-clacking against the hard tiles in the playroom, her multiple bangles clashing. She smiles at the foster lady before motioning me over. “Robin, Dess has been at Stanton High here in town, and she's a good student. You won't have any problems with her. Right, Dess?” She gives me a warning look, her over-plucked eyebrows arched high.

Please.
Like Farris'll be there to say boo if we
do
have problems? “Whatever.”

“Mrs. Carter has a daughter your age, and you'll be going to school with her. She can help you catch up on anything you might have missed.”

Not likely.
I say, “What about Trish?”

Farris frowns. “Visitations are going to be a problem. Normally, we don't remove a minor child from the placement county of a parent, but because of”—she hesitates—“extenuating circumstances, we feel it's best right now for your mother to finish out her term at Ironwood.”

“Best?” The word is out before I can stop it, and I already hate the look on Farris's doughy face. I hate the jangly plastic blobs of her earrings; I hate the blue shadow caked into the wrinkles on her eyelids. Damn, my head hurts.

“Dess, we've talked about this. There was a possibility that your mother would be safer if removed from some of the negative influences—”

“You mean ‘enforcers.' ” Farris always uses big words to hide what she means, like I don't know.

She ignores me and continues speaking. “—at the North Highlands facility. The district attorney's office will accept her testimony in exchange for a reduced sentence, but they are also taking seriously any threats made against her and feel that Ironwood would be safest now. That means you won't be able to see her until Thanksgiving, after her court date. But the two of you can still write letters anytime.”

Right. Like I need Trish's letters. They're full of sob stories and “Sorry” and words I can't use; promises she can't keep. I turn to the foster lady. “You live by a library?”

Her dark eyes get all wide and bright. “I've heard you like to read. We have a little library in the house, and the public library is two stops away on the bus—”

“You have Internet?”

Farris touches my shoulder. “Dess, stop interrupting. You'll have everything you need, and if there's anything you want, you can call your new caseworker, Mr. Bradbrook. Don't give Mrs. Carter a hard time.”

“Please, call me Robin,” the foster lady corrects Farris. “And, Dess, you and Hope will share the house computer. In a homework emergency, you can use my laptop.”

Baby throws himself against the foster lady's knees. “Mama, I'm
bored.
”

Mama?

“Dess, are you ready?” The foster lady's eyes are almost as light as Baby's hazel greens. “Do you have any more questions for Mrs. Farris?”

Mama.
My jaw is cranked so tight, my teeth are grinding.
Mama.
Foster Lady better not hold her breath waiting for me to call her
that.
I don't even play the “Mama” joke with Trish, and she
is
my mother.

“Are you ready to go, Dess?”

Jeez, could she stop asking? I push past Mrs. Farris and grab the black plastic bag with my clothes from next to the door. I cross my arms and stare at her.

“I guess that's my answer,” the foster lady says, and smiles. She crouches down and gives Baby a squeeze and holds on to his little hand. “Come on, Austin. Let's go get Jamaira and go see Hope at home.”

Home. Ha.

Farris pats my arm. “Be good, Dess,” she says. I shake her off. She needs to stop touching me like she's still my friend. Nobody asked her to sign me off to some other social worker.

The foster lady swings Baby's hand, and he skips along beside her, babbling about a truck and some other stuff. I don't know how she can understand him. He's cute, but he doesn't
ever
shut up.

“Defsa, come on,” he orders, twisting to look at me. He holds out his other hand, marked with blue ink from a marker somewhere, and waits.

A shudder works through me. His hand is dirty. No doubt he has those fecal coliform germs, and probably tons of other germs on top of those. Jeez,
kids.
Sighing, I hold out my hand and feel his tiny, sticky fingers curl around and grip. Germy or clean, he's Baby, and he's mine. I'm not letting go.

The school nurse could only hand out sanitary supplies—no painkillers—without signed parental permission. Which was stupid, since all Hope needed was to pop into any classroom and somebody would have something—legal or not—but Ms. Jerston probably wouldn't write her a pass. Hope sighed. Someone should have picked her up by now. If her cramps kept up, she was going to call her father's office and ask if someone could find him to give permission by phone. Hope knew better than to text her mother again—Mom would want her to have a cup of chamomile and do some yoga breathing. A moment ago, she'd felt as if someone had smashed into her lower abdomen with a brick. Last time she'd looked, yoga didn't fix being hit by a brick.

She sighed again and turned on her side, readjusting the novel she wasn't reading. This wasn't supposed to happen,
ever.
In junior high, when her bestie Savannah had still been in the US, the two of them had planned for
every
possible scenario. When they'd started their periods, Sav had put two tampons and a stain stick in the pocket in her denim messenger bag where pens were supposed to go. Even into freshman year, Hope had carried her supplies wrapped up in a roll of socks. But then stupid Rob Anguiano had kicked Hope's bag during study hall, and the flap had come loose and the socks had rolled out. Hope had held her breath in horrified anticipation when he picked them up, asking, “Are you going hiking or something?” Fortunately, nothing embarrassing had been revealed, but as soon as she got home, Hope had taken the socks out and shoved them into her bottom drawer.

Savannah had assured Hope that she'd keep on carrying
her
stain stick, at least. And as far as Hope knew, it was still in Savannah's denim messenger bag—unhelpfully now at King George V School in Hong Kong.

Hope blew out a breath. At least it was peaceful, lying on a cot in the nurse's office bathroom. Ms. Jerston had sent the registrar an absence excuse, and her student volunteer had picked up Hope's assignment from Mr. Cochrane in her American history and governance class. Hope had only English, lunch, PE, and whatever homework to worry about, and she didn't much care. Yeah, Mom wouldn't be happy she was bailing to go home, but whatever. A girl had to handle her business, and this was an emergency.

There was a knock, and Hope sat up eagerly. Ms. Jerston stuck her head in the door and said, “Your uncle's here.”

Hope gave a limp cheer.
Finally.

“He brought a laundry stick,” Ms. Jerston continued, holding up a little bag. “Do you want to try it or—”

Hope was already shaking her head. “I'm just going to go,” she said, unwrapping the blanket from her lower body, folding it, and putting it at the foot of the cot.

“I don't blame you,” Ms. Jerston said, standing out of the way. She hesitated. “You have everything you need, right?”

“Uh, yeah?” Hope said uncertainly. What did she mean, “have everything”? “I'll be fine with Aunt—um, Uncle Henry.”

“If you're sure,” Ms. Jerston said. The woman patted her hair and gave a little smile. “I just meant, if you need a female opinion and your mother's busy—feel free to call. Or you could have your uncle call—”

Her
uncle
? Ms. Jerston and her over-bright smile finally made sense. “Sure, Ms. Jerston. I'll tell my uncle to call you if you want, but his wife might have plans for him tonight.”

Smirking, Hope slipped out of the door and headed into the corridor. Aunt Henry was as single as he could be, but Hope had just gotten her uncle back after a four-year overseas stint in the navy. He'd been an EMT and search-and-rescue guy with the local fire station for the last year, and Hope wasn't ready for him to be married off to anyone just yet.

She'd had enough of things changing.

The tall, dark-skinned man pushed off the wall where he was leaning and slid his sunglasses down a little, scrutinizing Hope with his caramel-brown eyes. “H-bomb.”

“Aunt Henry.”

He had longer eyelashes than most girls. He wasn't wearing his firefighting uniform, but Hope got why Ms. Jerston had been all weird and eye-batting. Aunt Henry was pretty hot, even for an uncle. His muscled chest, arms, and abs were on display in the tight black T-shirt tucked into battered jeans. More than the ripped jeans, the silver earrings he wore in both ears told Hope he was off-duty.

“You okay, babe?”

Hope nodded and stumbled, a little off balance, as her uncle took her backpack and swung it over his shoulder. “Thanks for picking me up.”

“No bother. Sorry it wasn't sooner. Captain called a meeting at the last minute.” Henry shortened his steps to match Hope's. “Rob said she'll be home by five-thirty.”

Hope shrugged. She really didn't care when her mother, Robin, got home, now that she had a ride. All she wanted was to try to salvage her skirt and grab a nap.

Aunt Henry dug out his keys, and Hope heard the little chirp as his alarm defused and the door to his shiny black pickup truck unlocked. He came around to her side and handed up her backpack as she slid across the warm cloth-covered seat. He kept his gravelly voice low. “You need the drugstore?”

“Nope, I'm good,” Hope said, avoiding his eyes. This was an awkward conversation, even with her favorite uncle.

Aunt Henry came around to his side, got in, and then fiddled with his keys. “You want…ice cream or something? Rob said we're supposed to ‘celebrate' and be ‘body-positive.' ” Hope could hear the ironic quotation marks.

Jeez, Mom, really?
Hope glared at her uncle, embarrassed and irritated. “I. Want. To. Go.
Home.
” She bit off every word. “Mom can ‘celebrate' and whatever by herself.”

Henry's serious face was transformed by the width of his grin. He patted her shoulder and started the engine. “I hear ya, H-bomb. That's what I thought.”