Where I Belong (10 page)

Shea scoops her hair off the back of her neck and holds it on top of her head. “So,” she says without looking at me. “Do you hate me now?”

“Why would I hate you?”

“Because I'm a liar.”

I shrug. Now's the time. I have to tell her about me and my life. “I told you a bunch of lies too. I don't have any parents. Not a mother, not a father. My mother left me in the hospital after I was born and nobody knows her name. She just walked away. Nobody knows who my father is either. So I'm in foster care.”

The words tumble out, falling over each other as I say them, but at least I've let them out of my head. I look up and meet Shea's eyes.

“What if your mother is looking for you? What if she's sorry she left you in the hospital?” She's very serious, I can tell. She wants to believe my mother will find me someday.

“I used to think the same thing,” I tell her. “I imagined her going somewhere and looking up my birth certificate. If you know the place a person was born and the date, you can do that—even if you don't know the person's name. So she could find me if she wanted to.” I pick up a stick and start breaking it into little pieces.
Snap snap snap
.

I look at Shea. “She doesn't want to find me. I was a mistake. Maybe I ruined her life. Maybe she met some guy and got married and she has a family now. Other kids. Maybe she doesn't even think of me.”

“Maybe she has amnesia,” Shea says. “Maybe she's dead and she died thinking of you and wishing she hadn't left you in the hospital.”

Before I can tell Shea she watches too many movies, she says, “Or maybe she's scared you hate her and that's why she doesn't come.”

Of all the things Shea's said or I've thought, this makes the most sense. My mother's scared to see me, she thinks I hate her. Which I don't. I just want her to knock on Mrs. Clancy's door and tell me she's my mother and she's so, so sorry about abandoning me and we'll go away together and live in our own house in East Bedford so I can still be friends with Shea. I really thought I'd stopped hoping this would happen but here I am, just like the little kid I used to be, daydreaming about my mother.

“When you get older,” Shea says, “you can get all the information from Social Services and go find your mother yourself. Somebody must know her name.”

Shea goes on talking about how to find my mother, but my thoughts have drifted. What will I be like when I'm eighteen or twenty-one? I can't imagine myself that far in the future, but I'll probably be just like I am now, only even weirder. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll be an ordinary boring person living in the real world, dealing with Life. Will I have a job? Will I still love to draw or will I grow out of stuff like that? I don't like thinking about being eighteen or twenty-one. It scares me. I'd rather stay twelve forever like Peter Pan.

Shea punches my arm lightly. “You aren't listening to a word I'm saying, are you?”

I slide closer to her, close enough to smell her hair, sort of doggy in the heat. “You know what?” I say. “I'm glad we both lied. It makes us equal.”

I smile at her and she smiles back. Propping my elbows on the picnic table, I stare across the field at the kids playing baseball. Now that I've told Shea everything, my chest feels looser. It's like I've been holding my breath ever since I met her, sure she'd stop being my friend if she knew about Mrs. Clancy. But it's okay. She's sitting here beside me just like always.

She scoops up her hair again and holds it on top of her head. “Why is it so hot?” she says.

“Maybe because it's summer?”

She laughs and I see the little gap between her front teeth. The scar on her cheek. Her funny cats' eyes.

Over in the sandbox, Cody and Tessa are quarreling.

“There are so fairies!” Tessa shouts.

“Have you ever seen one?” Cody's voice is scornful. If he's not careful, he'll grow up to be a real-lifer.

“Course I have.”

“Liar.”

Tessa's voice rises. “They live in the lilac bush in the backyard.”

“Oh, sure.” Cody gets up and walks back to the chinning bar.

“Stupid dummy! I seen them! I seen them with my own eyes,” Tessa yells.

She wakes up Shane, who starts to cry until Shea plugs his mouth with a pacifier.

Shane spits it out and keeps crying. Shea picks it up, wipes the dirt off on her shirt, and sticks it back in his mouth. He spits it out again.

Tessa comes over and leans against Shea. “I'm hungry,” she says.

Shea looks at the big watch she wears. “It's almost noon. I better take them home.”

We walk back to her house. Cody asks me why my hair is so long. I say I like it that way. “My dad says only potheads wear their hair long. Do you smoke pot?”

“Of course he doesn't,” Shea answers for me. “You are so rude, Cody.”

“I just want to know stuff,” Cody says. “Hey,” he yells at a boy on a bike. “Give me a ride, Danny!”

The boy stops, and Cody hops on the handlebars. They zoom away downhill.

“He's going to get himself killed someday,” Shea says.

When we pass the house with the dogs, they run out from under the porch and start barking and leaping again.

“Do they do that every time you pass their fence?” I ask.

Shea nods. “They're bored. No one takes them for walks or pays any attention to them. They spend every day in that yard with nothing to do but bark. Some life, huh?”

Shea's mother is sitting on the front porch reading a magazine. Her hair's long and dark like Shea's and she's wearing shorts and a red T-shirt. She's really pretty, more like a teenager than the mother of four kids.

“Back already?” she asks.

Tessa opens the gate and runs to her mother. “I'm hungry. I want a peanut butter sandwich with strawberry jam. Can I? Please please please?”

“Ask Shea. She'll fix it for you.”

“I want you to fix it!”

At that moment, the pickup truck pulls into the driveway. The stepdad doesn't look any happier than he did when he left the house. This time he notices me.

“Looks like you picked up another stray,” he says to Shea. “Better take her back where you found her. We have enough mouths to feed already.” He laughs like he's kidding, but I decide it's time to leave.

“He's not a girl,” Cody tells his father. “He's a boy with long hair. But not a pothead.”

But the man has already lost interest in me. The screen door bangs shut behind him. The baby starts to cry and the dogs start to bark.

“Can you get away Sunday?” I whisper to Shea.

She shakes her head. “See you Monday,” she says. “Don't forget your math homework.”

I wave goodbye and head down the street toward the train tracks. It's so hot, the tracks waver in the distance. I smell creosote oozing out of the railroad ties. I inhale it, filling my nose with its pungent odor. It's a summer smell and I love it.

W
HILE I WALK
, I think about Shea's life and how different it is from what I imagined. Sad, it's sad—her life, my life too. How come some kids are lucky and others aren't?

There's this kid in my school. He was born with something wrong with his spine, and he'll never be able to walk. And he's not the only one. Our school has a wing set aside for kids like him. At least he's smart and funny and he loves to read. Others are less lucky. They can't talk, they can't even sit up. It's not fair, is it? There's something wrong with this so-called real world.

I want to talk to the Green Man about it. He's been around for so many years. Maybe he can explain it.

But when I finally reach my tree, I don't see him. I wait awhile just in case he appears, but I'm tired and I'm thirsty and I'm hungry and I'm hot. So I go home.

Mrs. Clancy is watching a game show on TV. “Where have you been all day?” she asks.

“Just out,” I say, and head for the kitchen.

“If you'd been home at noon, I'd have fixed your lunch,” she calls over the din of a commercial, “but it's after two.”

I open the refrigerator and get out bread and cheese and mustard. “Don't make a mess out there,” she calls.

“I won't.” I fix my sandwich, grab a bottle of water, and sit down to eat. Today's paper is lying on the table, so I scan the front page:
THREE SOLDIERS KILLED BY SUICIDE BOMBER IN AFGHANISTAN. CAR CRASH LEAVES FIVE DEAD. ARSON SUSPECTED IN APARTMENT FIRE. LOCAL POLITICIAN ARRESTED FOR DUI
.

The same stuff happens day after day, week after week, year after year after year. All that changes are the names and the dates. Depressed, I turn to the crossword puzzle, but Mrs. Clancy has already done most of it. I fill in the words she didn't know and make some corrections.

I think about going back to the woods, but I doubt the Green Man will be there. Besides, Mrs. Clancy has decided we need to go to Costco. She's got a long list of stuff to buy, including new underwear for me. Why can't I stay home and read, I ask, but she just clamps her lips together and ushers me to the car.
No telling what you'll do if I leave you home alone
, she's thinking.

Actually, it's good I go, because she's in a nice mood and buys me three T-shirts and a pair of jeans along with the boring underwear. She even treats me to a soda.

 

On Sunday morning, I wake up to the sound of thunder and hard wind-driven rain blowing in my open window. Half asleep, I slam the window shut and use an old T-shirt to mop up the water on the floor. Mrs. Clancy is always telling me not to leave the windows open at night, but I, of course, am a careless, irresponsible, thoughtless boy whose reason for existence is to make Mrs. Clancy miserable.

When the floor is dry, I wad up the T-shirt and shove it under my bed along with all the other junk I've kicked under there on room-cleaning days. Maybe she won't notice it's missing. After all, I have three new ones to wear now.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Clancy is sitting at the table reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. “It's about time you honored me with your presence,” she says—her way of greeting me. Yesterday's good mood is gone.

I grab a bowl and dump cereal into it.

“Are you going to eat all that?” she asks. “You know how I hate it when you waste food.”

She's in rare form today. Instead of answering, I pour on milk and fill a glass with orange juice. “How was the bingo game last night?”

“Can't you see I'm reading the paper?”

Badly, I think. It went badly. “Can I have the comics?”

She slides them across the table. “I wouldn't waste my time reading comics. You'll rot your brain.”

Silently I read my favorites, finish my cereal, and wish I had something to do besides spend the day in the house with my loving foster mother. “Can I borrow an umbrella?” I ask.

“
May
I borrow an umbrella,” she corrects me.

“May I borrow an umbrella, please?” I tack on
please
because she'll say something about the magic word if I don't.

“What do you want it for?”

To hold over my head while I take a shower
, I think,
to keep from getting a sunburn
, but out loud I say, “I need to go to the library. My history report's due tomorrow.”

Without remembering that the library's closed on Sundays, she says, “Take the one hanging on the hook by the back door. And don't lose it. It's my best one.”

Outside I take a deep breath of pure joy and head for the convenience store at the Sunoco station. Rain drums on the umbrella and splashes in puddles on the sidewalk. I have enough money to buy a soda and a twelve-inch Italian sub to eat for lunch. If the Green Man shows up, I can split the sub with him.

While I'm waiting to pay, Sean and his thugs come into the store. They have their sweatshirt hoods over their heads to keep the rain off. They look as big and scary and mean as ever, and they're laughing in a nasty way about something that probably isn't even funny.

Hoping they won't notice me, I turn my back and hand the cashier my money. I notice she's keeping an eye on them. She probably knows who they are.

I grab my change. I want to get out of there before they see me. Or rob the store and maybe shoot the poor girl at the cash register.

Half running, half walking, I head down the train tracks toward the woods. The rain has stopped but it's still cloudy, like it might start again any second.

In a few minutes, I hear voices behind me. It's them. I walk faster.

“The stupid girl never saw a thing,” one says.

“She sure was looking, though.” They laugh.

“Gimme some of the potato chips.”

It sounds like they're catching up with me. Just as I'm thinking I should disappear into the woods, Sean says, “Hey, isn't that the long-haired freaky kid?”

Gene laughs and says, “I thought it was a girl.”

“He's the one who told the cops about us,” T.J. says. “I ran right past the little punk.”

I start scrambling up the embankment toward the woods, but the cinders are wet and slippery from the rain and I fall. Before I can get up, I'm surrounded. Sean yanks me to my feet. He and T.J. drag me into the woods. Gene grabs the bag from the convenience store and Mrs. Clancy's umbrella.

“Look at this,” he says, “the freak brought us lunch. Isn't that nice of him? Or her?”

“And an umbrella in case it starts raining again.” T.J. opens the umbrella and dances around, spinning it madly.

By the time he's finished, Mrs. Clancy's umbrella is inside out, the struts are broken, the fabric is torn. “Man,” he says, “they just don't make umbrellas like they used to.” With that, he hurls it up in the air several times until he succeeds in tangling it in a tree's branches.