The Last Chance Texaco (3 page)

"Let's eat!" Roberto yelled to the kitchen. "Foooooood!" He started pounding his plate and making snorting sounds, and Juan and Eddy joined in.

Ben stuck his head into the dining room. "It's coming, it's coming, keep your pants on." Then Ben spotted me. "Hi, I'm Ben, the assistant zookeeper. You Lucy?"

I didn't get a chance to answer because the other kids had suddenly started laughing and whooping it up. Ben and I turned to see that Roberto had leaped up onto his chair and whipped open the front of his baggy jeans. Now he was wiggling his hips like a go-go boy, and his pants fell down around his thighs, showing us his boxers. Ben had told Roberto to keep his pants on, but he'd decided to take them off. Now Melanie was shrieking, "Take it off! Take it off!" and someone else was humming stripper music. The entire room had gone from zero to sixty in five seconds.

Just so you know, I wasn't shocked or surprised to see Roberto taking off his pants. Kids in group homes tend to be pretty literal. And like I said before, dinnertime can get kind of wild.

Roberto was still swaying and just starting to slip his boxers down when Ben said, "Roberto, how the hell do you expect us to eat after seeing your pimply ass?"

Everyone laughed except Roberto, who didn't even smile. In fact, he looked downright pissed. This was his joke, and he didn't like being interrupted. That's when I knew Roberto wasn't just the Cocky One. He was also the Hothead.

Ben said, "I'll get the food," and headed back into the kitchen to get the lasagna. Roberto had to know he couldn't compete with dinner, because he pulled up his pants and sat down again, only a little bit sulky. This was also pretty typical of group homes. Things start suddenly, but they often peter out just as fast. It's the plus side of thirty-second attention spans.

I sat and watched the kids around the table. There was the usual spitting of milk and flinging of silverware, and I learned that Melanie had a crush on Eddy, but not the other way around, and that Juan was jealous of Roberto, and that the guys all picked on Damon and the girls all picked on Yolanda.

When Ben, Gina, and Leon started bringing in dinner, I watched them too. After eight years in The System, I was sure what they were thinking. Damaged goods. That's how they saw us. And when something is beyond repair, you don't bother trying to fix it. If you can't throw it out, then you store it somewhere out of the way, in a basement or storage shed where no one ever goes. Kindle Home didn't look much like a storage shed, but that's what it was--a storage shed for broken teenagers. That's why the counselors didn't even care that, under the table, Roberto and Eddy were whaling away at Damon with their feet.

"Hey, Damon," Gina said, casually serving up the lasagna. "Thanks for your help today with my computer. I'd be lost without you. What does PPP stand for again?"

"Point-to-point protocol," Damon said.

There was a brief moment of silence around the table, and I saw Gina wink at Damon. That's when I knew what she'd said had been no accident. She was helping Damon with Roberto and Eddy. She was saying to them, Lay off the kid or maybe he won't help you the next time you guys need help with the computer. But she was doing it without calling attention to herself. It was actually pretty clever.

"Pass the grub!" Roberto said.

"Man, this house sucks," Eddy said. "When are we getting cable?"

I couldn't help but notice that they'd both stopped kicking Damon under the table.

At the same time, Leon plopped a plate down in front of me. "Allergic to cheese, right? We made one with soy cheese."

Okay, I thought to myself, so maybe I'd been a little bit wrong. Maybe Kindle Home wasn't
exactly
like every other group home I'd ever lived in.

Can I ask you a question?" I said to Yolanda later that night, after we'd gone to bed and turned out the lights.

"I guess," Yolanda said.

"Is this place always like this?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. It just seems different from the other group homes I've been in." Earlier that evening, we'd played board games. There had only been two throwings of the Pictionary board. This may not sound that great, but compared to other group homes, it was. Trust me on this.

"I guess," Yolanda said. She thought for a second, and I expected her to say something about Kindle Home. Instead, she said, "Do you ever think about your parents?"

"No." It was the truth.

"I do," she said. No kidding, I thought to myself. From what I'd seen so far, that was
all
she thought about. "I miss em."

"What happens when someone has a meltdown?" I said. A meltdown is just like it sounds. It's when some kid completely loses control. Throwing the Pictionary board because you're losing the game is not a meltdown, but breaking a window and using a piece of the broken glass to attack a counselor is.

"It depends," Yolanda said. "When Eric stabbed Juan with a screwdriver, they had to call the cops."

"What'd they do to him?"

"Eric? They sent him to some island."

So the stories were all true. Kindle Home really
was
the Last Chance Texaco.

"And then there was Monica. She kept cutting herself with staples and paper clips. They sent her to the island too. And Brian. Melanie said that Brian tried to rape her, but everyone knew she'd been screwing him all along, and she was just jealous that he liked Monica."

Okay, I thought. I get the picture.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Yolanda asked.

"No," I said. This was a lie. I'd had both a brother and a sister. My brother had been killed in the car accident with my parents, but my sister had lived. In the years after the accident, I used to dream that she and I would run off to live in this perfect little cabin up in the mountains--I guess because I was reading
Heidi
the night before my parents were killed. In my mind, like in the book, the cabin had a sleeping loft and a big stone fireplace, and it was perched on a rocky cliff overlooking jagged, snow-covered peaks and fields of goats and wildflowers. But then my sister had been adopted, and she'd moved into a real house. For a while, her new parents were going to adopt me too, but they'd eventually decided I was too much to handle. A little while later, they'd had to move to another state, and I hadn't heard much from my sister since then.

"I wish I had a brother or a sister," Yolanda said. "It was just my parents and me."

"How many chances do they give you?" I said. "Before they send you to the island?"

Yolanda thought for a second, and I was afraid she was going to say something else about her family. "I don't know. They've never sent anyone right away. Not unless they're really violent."

"Who makes the decision?"

Just then the door opened, and light spilled into the bedroom from the hallway. I immediately closed my eyes, and not just because the light was so bright. This was a night spot check. They're real big on knowing where everyone is at all times in group homes, so there are no locks on any of the bedroom doors, and counselors do random spot checks all night long. That way, they can make sure no one is sneaking into any of the other bedrooms to have sex, which is a really big deal, or sneaking away from the house at night, which is an even bigger deal. I heard the squeak of the floorboards, and I knew whichever counselor had opened the door was now walking across the room for a closer view. A second later, a shadow blocked the light in my eyelids, and I knew the counselor was standing right over me, making sure it really was me in my bed. Then the counselor turned to check on Yolanda. I opened my eyes just a slit and recognized Ben's back and butt. Yeah, sometimes guy counselors have to check on a girl's room, and yeah, sometimes they catch you dressing or worse. But you get used to the lack of privacy, just like you get used to everything else.

The floorboards squeaked again, and I saw Ben heading for the hallway again. A second later he closed the door, leaving Yolanda and me in the dark again.

I had a hundred other questions to ask my roommate, but the door had barely closed when she said, "We did have two cats. Did you have any pets?"

• • •

When I went down to the kitchen the next morning, fists were flying. But it wasn't a fight. It was an old woman kneading dough. She had her back turned toward me, but I knew this had to be Mrs. Morgan, the only counselor I hadn't met yet. It was midmorning, and the rest of the kids in the house had gone off to school. But Kindle Home was in a different district than Bradley Home, and I hadn't been signed up for classes at my new school yet. So I'd slept in, and now Mrs. Morgan and I had the house to ourselves.

"Hey," I said, still standing in the doorway.

Mrs. Morgan glanced back at me. She was old, but she was no grandma. Yeah, she had wrinkles and white hair cut short like a nun or a lesbian. And she had liver spots and sensible shoes. But she also had eyes that were crystal blue, and the kind of perfect posture that makes you stand up a little straighter, even though you don't normally give a rip about things like posture.

She stepped away from the counter, revealing a large metal bowl. "Take over," she said.

"What?" I said.

"Come here and take over this dough. When we're done here, I'll make you some breakfast."

I stepped closer. There was an enormous blob of white dough in the middle of the bowl. I'd never kneaded anything before, and I didn't want to start now. I wanted food and a shower.

"Go ahead," Mrs. Morgan said. "But wash your hands first."

I ran my hands under the faucet, then gave the dough a few feeble pokes. It seemed pliable at first, but it wasn't really. Under the surface, it was stiff. You could push it, but it pushed back, stubborn-like.

"Fold it over," Mrs. Morgan said. "Like this." She demonstrated, and I saw that she had hands like the roots of an old oak tree. I wondered how much of her life she'd wasted kneading dough. Hadn't she heard about bakeries? But I had to admit, the dough went where Mrs. Morgan pushed it and stayed there.

I tried to do what she'd done.

"Harder," she said. "And always in only one direction."

I tried again. Mrs. Morgan just watched my hands. She didn't say anything, so I guess that meant I was doing it right.

"I'm Mrs. Morgan," she said.

"Lucy," I said.

"I'm going to go over the house rules with you."

"Yeah, I know."

She kept watching, only now it seemed like she was watching more than just my hands. Suddenly, I was glad I hadn't showered or changed out of my bathrobe. If she didn't like it, that was her problem.

"Okay," she said at last. "Stop kneading. Now we have to roll them into shape."

"What are you making? Isn't this bread?"

"No, it's soft pretzels. So we have to roll it out into ropes and twist them into shape."

I didn't want to roll it out into ropes and twist it into shape! I wanted to eat breakfast and then maybe watch some television. How often did I get a day off? But I watched as Mrs. Morgan scooped up a gob of dough and began rolling it between her hands. In ten seconds, she'd whipped out a cord of dough about two feet long and about half an inch thick. Then she placed it on the counter and twisted it into a big pretzel, like the kind you'd buy at a movie theater if they weren't so damn expensive.

"Now you try," she said.

I sighed and reached for a hunk of dough. I rolled it into a two-foot rope between my palms, but it immediately shrank back to about half that size.

"You have to be tough," Mrs. Morgan said. "Make it go where you want it to go. If you force it hard enough, it'll stay."

I tried it again, forcing it this time, and it sort of worked.

"Now twist it," Mrs. Morgan said. It was almost a command. What was she, the Kindle Home drill sergeant?

I twisted it. Of course, it didn't stay in the right shape.

"Press it down," Mrs. Morgan said, starting in on her next pretzel. "Be firm with it."

We kept rolling and twisting, and I got better. While we worked, Mrs. Morgan went over the house rules. I won't bore you with them all. Basically, they were divided into two categories. There were the Rules and Regulations, which were all the picky little things you had to do or not do, like weekly chores and not smoking in the house. If you broke these rules, you got points, which were totaled up at the end of the week. The more points you had, the fewer privileges you got the following week--privileges like being allowed to watch television or go to a football game. If you did something especially good, or if you did extra chores, you could also earn tokens, which you could exchange for money or use to buy down your point total.