Peas and Carrots (6 page)

Not gonna lie, I'd be sitting that close if I could, too. The man is
ridiculously
fine.

Baby's playing with a car he found on the grass next to the sandbox, and then Hottie takes Jamaira from Hope. He props her on his knees and talks to her, his voice rumbly and calm. The baby smiles, Hope smiles, and even Foster Lady looks less like an uptight hippie. I can hear the music from an ice cream truck down the street, and across the back fence a set of wind chimes tinkles invisibly in the light breeze. This could be one of those Disney Channel movies, where everybody looks nice, wears good clothes, and makes some stupid joke right before the credits roll.

For some reason, that pisses me off.

I cross my arms, digging my nails in. The pain clears my head and pushes reality onto the sunny little scene. I remember my rules: If I don't own it, they can't steal it. You can't lose what you don't have. I remind myself that I don't care how hot anyone is—I don't even care how cute Baby is—I'm not about that. I'm here to make sure Foster Lady takes care of Baby, then I'm gone. Period. I'm not some weak shorty who's gonna get all attached. This isn't a holiday in some kind of family paradise. I don't have time for that.

Everybody's talking or watching the babies—everybody but Hope, anyway. Across the table, she's looking at me, her head cocked a little. She's thinking….Behind that fat freak face, she's thinking things, and I don't like it. I don't need her thinking about me.

“Whatcha gawkin' at, heifer?”

It's barely a whisper, but she still jerks, shocked. At the group home, they dock my points for use of profanity, so I mostly don't, at least not out loud. Here, though, I don't know. Foster Lady didn't say if she gave points for “kindness.”

Just like I thought she would, Hope looks off to the side, all hurt.
Weak.

But just when I've got her schooled, Hottie next to her stares me down. Crap, did he hear? I brace myself.

“So…Odessa and Austin, huh? Buddy of mine lives in Austin. Nice folks there.”

Meaning what? That Austin is better than me? That there aren't nice people in Odessa?
Whatever.
“The only ‘folks' I know in Austin don't answer to ‘nice.' ”

He's grinning—laughing at me. “I see. Do you answer to ‘nice'?”

Oh, this feels better. I flip back my hair. “Nice? Who needs that shit?”

Deduct ten points for profanity.
Rena's voice in my head sounds disappointed. Everybody hears—Foster Lady, Mr. Carter, probably even Baby—but nobody does anything. Hottie's brows rise, and Mr. Carter looks over for a minute. Foster Lady just says, “Language, Dess.”

Funny thing, though—since everybody's staring, my head feels calm now, for the first time all day. With everyone looking at me crazy, it feels…familiar. Better, like the little fizz in my veins means things are all right. But even though nobody's tripped too hard over this and the adults have gone on talking, Boring Girl's all in a huff. That female's staring so hard, her eyes are about to pop out of her head.

I smirk and lean forward to whisper, “What's the matter, widdle munchkin? Haven't learned that word in school? None of the big kids talk to you?”

Hope's chin firms, and instead of matching my whisper, she tells me, “Maybe nobody said, but we have a kindness rule.” I just stare at her as she recites, “Before we choose words or actions, we choose kindness—”

“Or we get
time-out,
” Baby says emphatically, shaking his finger.

Hope gives Austin a dirty look while Foster Lady's brother lets out a snicker, and Foster Lady chucks Baby under the chin. Even Mr. Carter is smiling and patting Baby's head. All of them but Hope are laughing—not at Baby, not really. At me.

Me.

Hottie sounds straight
stoopid
when he laughs, like a big dumbass donkey. I hate Foster Lady's ape-faced grin, her horsey white teeth and fat lips and her big stupid mouth. I hate Baby's big wide eyes and the little curl of a smile that lets me know he thinks he's done something smart. I hate the— No. Forget it. They're all just stupid. I hate them all.

Hope rolled onto her back in the messy tangle of blankets, scowling. She could still hear her good-little-girl voice telling Dess the house rules, like the most incredibly
lame
loser ever. Who even did that? Who prissed around, sounding like their
mother,
for heaven's sake?

Hope grunted, imagining her mother's input. She'd say, “Well, Hope, at least you
have
a mother around to sound like,” and then Hope would have to think of “the less fortunate,” blah, blah, blah. Fine, so Dess and Austin's mom was in “vocational rehabilitation” down south. It didn't sound like real jail or anything, and it didn't give Dess an excuse to call Hope a freak.

Why did everything always have to change? Couldn't Dess have just stayed where she was? Why did she have to come to
Hope's
house, to get in
Hope's
face and mess up
her
life?

And…
heifer?
Who was that skinny little stick calling a heifer? At least cows gave milk. What did stick insects do? Nothing but look like sticks, that's what.

Hope fluttered the covers, sending cool air to her feverishly warm body. She should be better than this, she knew—Mom would be shaking her head if she heard her now. But Dess was trouble, no doubt. She'd probably stolen something or mouthed off to a gang of older girls. Her social worker had probably had to move her to Glenn County to save her from being beat down by thugettes with names like Trina and Mel, girls who knew how to punch.

Hope savored this image of Dess's tight-lipped, scowling mouth swollen and misshapen, her raccoon-ringed eyes smeary and sad. She flung back the covers and sat up, her eyes narrow. Dess probably had some kind of a record. In all seriousness, it wasn't fair that Mom hadn't even said anything. This was the kind of stuff Hope needed to know if she had to share a house with her. Why not find out for sure?

Within moments, she was up and padding silently down the hall.

Mom would drop a brick if she knew what Hope was going to do. And it wasn't because Odessa had called her a heifer—no. Hope took after her mom in build and her dad in height. Unlike her classmate Jaswinder Singh, who had topped six feet over the summer, Hope was probably going to stay five foot three forever and always be, as Grandma Amelie put it, “sturdy.” Hope wasn't just mad that Dess had insulted her or sneered at her or tried to boss her about Austin. What bugged her was that Dess
knew
things. Dess wore her street cred like a high-gloss polish made up of secrets, lies, and information—and she looked at Hope with know-it-all smugness, like Hope was this ginormous dim-witted child who knew nothing at all.

So maybe Hope
didn't
know everything, but she knew how to find out….Knowledge, after all, was power.

The door to the nursery was half-open, and the night-light spilled a tiny pool of pinkish glow into the hall. Hope paused to peek into the little cave and heard Austin's sodden breathing and the whistle of his breathy snores. Out cold. Jamaira was lying on her back, eyes open, taking in the shapes the shadows made on the ceiling. Hope watched her for a moment and then stepped back, feeling the conflicted twist of love and pity she always did at the silent, floppy-limbed baby. Eight-month-olds were supposed to roll over. They were supposed to babble and reach for things and rock on their knees and think about crawling. They weren't supposed to lie there and just…be. Hope rubbed her face and sighed. Well, at least Maira wasn't seizing or crying. Unlike her big foster sister, Jamaira was content. Hope made herself keep moving.

The office seemed empty at first glance. The lamp was on, so Hope listened in the hallway, wondering if Mom had just popped into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Hearing nothing, she pushed the door open farther. Crossing to the desk, she nudged the mouse and saw that her mother had been the last on the computer but hadn't left any documents open. Hope leaned over the desk and poked around briefly in her mother's desktop files, searching for the reports Mom completed for Austin's social worker. If she could get the name of Austin and Dess's mother, she was sure she could find something. Arrests were a matter of public record, weren't they?

Hope ruthlessly squashed the voice in her head that argued that if Mom had wanted her to know details, she would have told her. Mom
had
told her a few things about the situations of the other kids they'd had stay through the years, and she'd told her about Austin. Hope knew that Austin's mother—Dess's mother, too—was in jail now, but she didn't know why. She knew Dess had been in a group home in North Highlands for almost a year. But why hadn't she been in a home like Austin? Had she been in trouble? Hope had to know more.

Unfortunately, the universe didn't supply her any answers. There wasn't anything to be found in her mother's computer files, and for the moment Hope was stumped. She killed time by going online and checking to see if any of her classmates were saying anything interesting. She answered a quick note from Natalie, who hoped she was okay, and deleted a forward from Kalista, who still sent kitten pictures and dumb jokes to the whole class. Finally, Hope reread Savannah's last two emails and clicked through her travel blog.

Leaning back in the office chair, the wireless keyboard pulled toward her, Hope made a comment on Savannah's latest post. She pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk to prop up her foot and heard the crinkle of paper. She looked down and saw a white envelope printed with the seal of the Department of Public Welfare of the State of California, Department of Families and Children.

Score.

The envelope was wedged down the side of the drawer, as if Mom had dropped it there accidentally. It had already been opened and the contents refolded and replaced. Hope smoothed the papers open and skimmed. The first was a cover letter from Terrie Farris, MSW, stating that this was the transfer paperwork for the minor child Odessa LeAnn Matthews, who was transitioning from the child residential facility to secured foster care, blah, blah, blah.

“Here follows a list of possessions and transfer of child funds,” blah, blah, blah, “medical records,” blah, blah, blah, “Individual Service Plan,” blah, blah, blah.

So…it looked as if she'd been in
tons
of foster homes, short placements here and there, and— A police report! Hope wriggled happily as she scanned it. Arresting Officer, Isaac Tindley. Incident Report:
(1)
Runaway delinquent c. 602, (2) Resisting arrest c. 148.

Hope read further, and she blinked in shock. According to the missing persons report, Dess had been on the street for two months! Jeez, she'd only been—Hope quickly did the math—eleven! She shook her head and read on. No wonder she hadn't been in foster care with Austin. A three-month stint in Juvenile Hall after that, then two group homes in the last three years.
Huh.
Hope skimmed a few more papers, thumbing through them quickly. No parole officer was listed. There was something about a lawyer, though. But all foster kids had lawyers, even Austin and Maira. Hope frowned and flipped through some more papers, strangling on the legalese and wishing for something easier.

Transfer of guardianship of minor child, blah, blah, blah— Ah.

The words on the bottom of the page seemed to stand out in bold print:

The confidential transfer of the minor child Odessa LeAnn Matthews by order of the District Court of Los Angeles, Honorable J.D.D. Levins, at the request and for the protection of Trish Matthews, who is currently serving the remainder of her mandatory minimum sentence in segregation at Ironwood Vocational Center. Information may be released only upon request to the child's and to the parent's attorney, the court and court services, including probation staff, U.S. government agencies, and deputized agents of the Department—

“Hope. Harmony. Carter.”

Hope jerked so hard at her mother's voice that the envelope almost flew out of her hands. She folded the papers immediately. “Mom.” She gulped, her throat suddenly Sahara dry.
Crap,
this was bad. “Uh, I was—”

“No.” Her mother snatched the papers from her grasp and glared down at her, her wide mouth compressed with anger. “Don't even try, Hope. There is no way you could imagine that this was for you.
None whatsoever.
”

Hope licked her lips and talked fast. “Okay, no. But, Mom—”

“Was I gone too long today? Was I not available to you to answer any questions?”

Oh, here it came: her mother's “I'm-so-disappointed-you-didn't-come-to-me” talk. Hope heard it frequently these days. “No, Mom.”

“Was your father unavailable? Was there no other option but to find information by snooping and poking through things that don't belong to you?”

“No.” Eyes safely pointed toward the floor, Hope rolled them in disgust.

“I cannot imagine what I did or said today that would let you think that it was okay for you to come into the office and snoop through an obviously confidential file. This was not a kindness, Hope Carter. You now know things about Dess that you didn't need to know.”

“Jeez, I wouldn't tell anyone,” Hope mumbled. “Mom—”

“
That
is
beside
the
point,
and you
know
it!”

Hope jumped as her mother thumped the heel of her hand against the desk. Her mother's brown eyes were dark with emotion, and she was blinking rapidly. “I am disappointed, Hope. This dishonest, unkind behavior is beneath you. You know better. Just because Dess is your age doesn't mean she's not like any other foster child we've had in our home. She is your
sister.
Sneaking and spying won't win her trust.”

“I'm not
trying
to win her trust,” Hope said. She hated when her mother talked parenting-book talk. “She thinks I'm a freak, and you heard what she said when I just
talked
to Austin. It's like she's the ‘real' sister now.” Hope made quotation marks in the air. “And I'm supposed to disappear. You don't know what she's like when you're not there. She says stuff when you can't hear her. I was just…I don't know.”

Mom sighed. “You were just trying to get information on the enemy. In a war, that would make sense, Hope. But your life isn't a war, and Dess isn't your enemy.”

Hope found herself sighing along with her mother's long yoga breath. Realizing her arms were crossed, she uncrossed them, consciously mirroring her mother's body language. Psychology could work both ways, right? There had to be some way to salvage this. “So, Mom,” she began carefully, “it said that Dess's mother is in segregation? Is that protective custody, or—”

But Hope had miscalculated. Her mother stiffened, angry again. “Do you honestly think we're going to discuss this? You have enough information that doesn't belong to you. It is
confidential,
Hope.” She lifted Hope's chin with a finger and looked down into her eyes. “There will be consequences for your actions tonight, young lady.”

Hope pulled her chin away and crossed her arms again. “
Whatever.
I'm sorry I snooped, but I need to know what I'm dealing with. She's already in my face, and it's the first
day.
Can't I at least know if she stabbed someone at her group home or something?”

Her mother sighed, her righteous stance deflating. She leaned against the desk. “Hope, listen. We talked about this before—how hard change is for you and what a hard transition this might be for Dess. She's a challenge—and will be a challenge for all of us. I know it's not going to be easy to have her here, but one positive from this situation is a chance to make new friends. In spite of what you've read, will you try to keep an open mind? It's not going to be easy for Dess to adjust to us, and I feel she needs an ally.”