Guardian (2 page)

Then I pick up all the glass and throw it out, collect the macaroni pieces with paper towels, and clean the whole section of floor with a bucket and sponge. Pine-Sol and Cheez Whiz combine into a lethal smell. By then it's time to put my shirt in the wash. I put away all the casserole dishes, which takes some time, because there isn't much room in the fridge. I also put away all the candy, cookies, and pies. In the living room, I hear the first guests beginning to leave and I hurry up a little.

Using the back hallway, I go down to the bathroom we kids all share, strip, and take a long, hot shower. For insurance, I pour half a bottle of rubbing alcohol down my back, gritting my teeth at the burn, but knowing it's for my own good. There isn't much blood at this point. None of the cuts were really deep. It doesn't matter anyway. I can't put Band-Aids on myself.

I put on a T-shirt I can afford to ruin and jeans, and then I close the seat, sit down on the toilet, put my head in my hands, and cry so hard it feels like I'm trying to throw up.

The door opens. “I see your wee-wee!”

Sister Number Three, five-year-old Drew, aka The Screamer. This is a phase she's going through now, opening the bathroom door on me. I'm hoping it's a short phase. I also wonder what kind of sadistic builder put a pocket door on a bathroom.

She stares at me now with her angel face, her big brown eyes taking in the situation, realizing her mistake. “Hunter's crying!” she screams instead. She takes off down the hall, ponytail bouncing. “Hunter's crying! Hunter's crying!”

I decide to go to bed early.

Chapter 2

The next day is Monday and we're back to business as usual. Stephanie explained herself all day yesterday, saying she needed to go right back to work to “hold herself together.” Personally, I'd like to take a day off from school and fall apart, but I know that's not going to happen.

I sit at the kitchen table, cutting a piece of toast into smaller and smaller squares with my knife and fork. Women and girls fly and flap around me in all their stages of dress and undress, and I feel like I'm looking at them from the end of a long tunnel.

“Drew, please eat something! You're going to make me late!” Stephanie is hopping on one foot, trying to pull the strap of a sandal over her heel.

Drew is using her spoon to draw circles in her oatmeal. “Can I have a banana?”

“I need five dollars,” I say, trying to slip it in through the confusion. “Our class is raising money to help the Red Cross.”

“Five dollars! That sounds like an awful lot!” says Andrea.

“Who asked you?” I break into a light sweat.

“Well, if you're making a donation, the amount should be voluntary.” Andrea has locked on me with her bland blue eyes. “I can't believe they'd tell you an amount you have to give.”

God, how I hate her. I look at Stephanie, but she's not even listening. She's advancing on Drew with a hairbrush in her teeth.

“You can sit next to me on the bus if you want to, Hunter,” Jessie ventures in a low voice.

I give her a vicious glare until she drops her eyes.

“How do you get your hair in such a mess just by sleeping?” Stephanie asks Drew, brushing furiously.

“I want a banaaaaaana!” Drew screams.

“Stephanie?” I try again. “Did you hear me? I need five dollars for school today.”

“I'll loan it to you.” Andrea smiles. “At twenty percent interest.”

“I have five dollars.” Jessie rummages in her bottomless backpack. “Mom, can I give Hunter the five dollars he needs?”

I look at Jessie across the table. I do want to be grateful, but …

“Don't give him money!” Andrea says to her. “He's always asking for money and making up stories about it. He's taking advantage of you!”

I wonder, since Stephanie isn't reacting to any of this, can she even hear us? She seems totally focused on brushing and ponytailing Drew. “Whose turn is it to make dinner?” she asks.

“Hunter's!” Andrea cries.

Actually, it's Stephanie's turn, but I'm not stepping in that. Anyway, the refrigerator is full of casserole dishes. “Yeah, it's mine,” I say to Stephanie. “So anyway, could I please have …”

“Here!” Jessie thrusts a handful of crumpled ones across the table at me.

Andrea grabs it. “Stephanie! Are you going to let Hunter shake down his own sister that way?”

“Guys, please!” Stephanie says. “I can't hear myself think. Drew, let's go. I'm late!”

Drew starts to cry and hiccup. “I want a ba-na-na!”

Stephanie picks her up and carries her to the back door. We all pause and listen to the car rev up and head out. Then, like someone hit a button on a remote, we go back into action.

“Give me that money!” I lunge at Andrea across the table. She dangles it just out of my reach.

“Give it to Hunter!” Jessie whines. “It's my money and I gave it to Hunter!”

Andrea chuckles. “You hear that, Hunter? She talks like you're her ho.”

“Shut up!” Jessie's fists are clenched and she's blushing furiously. She comes at Andrea, knocking her chair over, and they start going at it like a couple of WWE divas, only without the sex appeal. Like the heel I am, I snatch the money out of Andrea's hand and step over them on my way out.

Jessie and I wait side by side for the bus in uncomfortable silence. Andrea walks to Coral Springs High around the corner.

“Thanks,” I finally say to Jessie, not making eye contact.

“You can't keep this up,” she says softly.

“I know.”

Luckily, the bus comes. I stand back to let Jessie get on first. Not because I'm a gentleman, but I want to see where she sits so I can sit somewhere else. Also, I'm in no hurry to see Duncan Presser. If I'm a ho, I guess Duncan Presser is my pimp.

He is sitting in the last seat on the bus, grinning at me like a fat boy looks at a Thanksgiving turkey. Jessie sits near the front, looking at me hopefully. I move to the middle. It won't matter. Wherever I sit, Duncan will come to me. If I sit next to another kid, Duncan will just glare at them until they move.

I study my hands, while my peripheral vision monitors Duncan sliding in next to me. The seat groans.

“What kept you, man?” I say.

He guffaws. I amuse Duncan tremendously, but he's an easy audience. I can make him laugh by joking around, but also with easier things like blushing, shaking, crying, moaning in pain …

“Got my money, Girl-boy?” Duncan has a whole encyclopedia of pet names for me.

I silently pass him Jessie's five dollars, knowing that by making today easier for myself, I've made next week much harder.

“Hey, very good, Lambchop! I knew you were a smart kid.” He snaps the money lovingly. “I'll bet that you're smart enough to come up with ten dollars by next Monday!”

Jessie turns in her seat and throws me an anxious look. I glare at her and she whips around.

“Duncan, it was really hard to get this. I can't …”

“Oh, yes you can! You can and you will. Just be creative, Cupcake. Sell drugs. Rob a liquor store. The important thing is to keep me happy. Remember the last time I wasn't happy?”

My right arm remembers every time it rains. “Duncan, you can't keep raising the price on me! If it was, even, like the same price every week …”

“I don't want excuses, Fruitpie!” He grabs my jaw, jacks it up so I have to look at him. “I want cash. You make it happen. Ten bucks next Monday. Or you die.” He lets go and ruffles my hair. “Have a good week!” He lumbers back to his seat. All the kids who were staring quickly look away from me. I rotate my neck checking for injuries and finding none. I get a sneaky, sudden urge to cry but I fight it off. What choice do I have?

When I count up all the bullies in my life, it makes me feel bad, because I think there has to be something defective about me to make me such a target. I'm shorter than most of the guys (okay, and the girls) in my class, and thin, so maybe that's it. I just look easy to knock down. But Jessie, who is a bully-target, too, says we put out a vibe that whatever you give us, we'll take it, and whatever you take from us, we'll give it. I'd like to think maybe all foster kids are like that, but Andrea and Drew are normal, self-confident kids. My theory is that once you start feeling like a loser—and I started that pretty young—you can't stand up for yourself.

All this was to bring you to Mrs. Morales, my earth science teacher. She's the bully who disturbs me the most, because I know Stephanie and Duncan were born to be mean to people. But everyone likes Mrs. Morales. I like Mrs. Morales. But Mrs. Morales doesn't like me.

“Hunter, please take your seat,” she says the minute my foot crosses the threshold. She doesn't say this to the other fifteen kids walking in. Do I look like I have a plan to not take my seat? To stand in the doorway and defy her?

I walk to a desk with my head down, already feeling bad before the bell even rings.

Did I also mention that Mrs. Morales is hot? She's about five-ten, most of it legs. She wears short tight skirts and real nylon stockings. Most of the female teachers have these sex-free uniforms: long denim skirt, long denim jumper, giant patchwork dress, like something the Taliban would come up with if they were into denim.

Mrs. Morales has shiny black high heels and her dress today is cherry red to match her lipstick. Jesus.

She paces in front of us, letting us settle in and mess with our books. “I assume all of you read your assignment last night.” She looks right at me like I'm famous for not reading my assignments. “So can someone please tell me the difference between folding and faulting.”

I know the right answer and raise my hand. She calls on someone else. She draws pictures of folding and faulting on the board while Sherry Studebaker pontificates. When she writes on the board, her skirt rides up on the right side and her whole body sways and jiggles. Jesus.

“Hunter?”

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Can you name an igneous rock besides granite?”

I am blushing so hard I can feel it. She always knows when my mind is blanking. I see she has written
igneous
on the board. When did that happen? I've lost time, like a UFO abductee, and the only igneous rock I can think of to save my life is granite.

“Can I name a sedimentary rock instead?” I can think of tons of sedimentary rocks. Sandstone, limestone, shale, conglomerate. The class laughs at my bargaining and she frowns, thinking I'm being disruptive on purpose.

“I need an igneous rock, Hunter. Did you read the chapter at all?”

“Yes, I read it!” I sound angry but I can't help myself. “You just happen to be asking me the one thing I don't know! Let me …”

“See me after class, please,” she says and pivots away from me. “Anyone?”

Sinesha Williams says basalt. A rock I will never forget for the rest of my life. The igneous rock basalt.

I don't hear the rest of the class. I just stare into space, chanting in my head. Sandstone, limestone, shale, conglomerate.

After class she gives me a note to give to Stephanie. Of course I open it and read it. It says I am defiant. Stephanie uses that word to describe me too.

Jeez, what if I am? I'd think if I was defiant, bullies wouldn't be shaking me down for so much money.

“We're going to have to make some changes around here,” Stephanie says at dinner, which none of us are eating because I heated up one of the casseroles and it's sort of gray and hard to identify. Sandstone, limestone, shale, conglomerate.

“What kind of changes?” Andrea asks.

Stephanie folds her hands on the table. “With Mike gone, things are going to have to be different. Everyone's got to help out more.”

I look around the table at the person who has to do the dishes tonight, the person who has to take out the trash, and the one who cleaned the house after school today. None of them are Stephanie. What more are we supposed to do?

“Lots of foster parents don't honor their commitments.” She pokes at the sedimentary casserole and puts down her fork. “Some of you already know that. You've lived in several homes. But I don't believe in that. The easy thing would be to say I can't handle the responsibility of four kids on my own.”

I bite my tongue so I won't say that we're a source of income as well. Instead I say, “Didn't Mike have some kind of pension or death benefit or something?”

Everyone glares at me. I guess for using the word
death
. Or
benefit
. Or for putting the two together.

Stephanie aims a long red nail at me. “This is why all your teachers think you're defiant.”

“Mrs. Morales isn't all my teachers!” I say, which just proves her point.

“It's great that you kids help with the housework,” she goes on, now eating a slice of bread out of desperation. “But I'm going to need financial help from all of you as well.”

I picture little Drew running a sweatshop sewing machine and think of
A Christmas Carol
. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

Andrea takes the ball. “We're underage,” she says.

“Think outside the box,” Stephanie says. This is one of her favorite expressions along with
ramp up
. “There are lots of things kids your age can do. Mow lawns, babysit, bag groceries, get a paper route. We'll have a contest to see who can earn the most.”

Drew bursts into tears. “I don't wanna get a job!”

“That's the best part, honey,” Stephanie says. “I already thought of something wonderful for you. You're so cute and pretty. I was thinking we could get you into modeling, maybe even a beauty contest—you'll be a glamour girl!”

“Nooooo!” Drew wails. “Not a hammer girl!”

“You don't understand, honey,” Stephanie says firmly. “It'll be fun, you'll see. And you might earn more money than your brother and sisters put together!”