Guardian (9 page)

Then I went to the House from Hell. Their name was Fairbanks or Fairfax. They had this older kid, Toby. He was probably ten, but to me he looked like a twenty-year-old longshoreman. Toby's first words to me were, “This is MY yard!” And it was. Toby was one of those cute kids who torture neighborhood dogs and cats, and I was just another small mammal to him. He tied me up with ropes in the garage, tried to bury me alive in the backyard, and gave me a seven-stitch cut in the back of my head while we were playing pro-wrestlers and he'd found a folding chair in the hall closet. His parents never did anything to him because he was their real kid and I was just an experiment that could be canceled. I pleaded with the caseworkers to get me out of there and after enough trips to the hospital, they agreed with me. They wrote in my file that I wasn't integrating with the family, as if
I'd
done something wrong. The caseworker warned me that if I got too many placements, nobody would ever want me because I'd look like a problem child.

By that time I was seven and I didn't get my hopes up anymore. I spent the next two years with Lily Stevens. I know her first name because she wanted me to call her Lily. Lily was a good person, but she was completely crazy. There were about a hundred things you had to remember to keep up with her craziness, but the main thing was not to generate garbage. The planet was in danger if we put out more than one little sack of trash per week. Aluminum foil had to be washed and reused. Same for plastic bags. She thought I was separating plies in the toilet paper to make it last, but since she didn't follow me into the bathroom, I drew the line there. She was very cheap and everything she had was from yard sales and didn't work right. None of the clocks kept time. I wore weird clothes to school and got beat up regularly—no big deal for me at that point. The worst thing she did was serve food she knew was spoiled. Ever see a rubber carrot that you can wobble back and forth? Ever try to choke down an overripe banana? Occasionally, she'd miscalculate and I'd throw up, but again, this was all stuff I was willing to work with. But one day when a caseworker was visiting, Lily just started crying. Started crying and couldn't stop. Started talking about all the assassinations that happened when she was a kid, Kennedy and King and Kennedy and how her mother never let her wear stockings, only tights, and pretty soon, the caseworker pulled the plug and made a phone call.

So I ended up here. This family was like the Brady Bunch after what I'd been through. Mike was the most reasonable, decent guy you could find, and when Stephanie flew off the handle, he would jump in to protect me, at least, most of the time. I got the feeling after a while that he was the one who had wanted me. They already had the girls, including Drew, who was just a baby then. At first, Andrea and Jess were a solid wall of opposition to me, making dumb-boy jokes, and I knew Stephanie felt the same, that male children contained evil chemicals that would destroy the civilized world of girls.

Still, life was okay here until Mike died. Jessie defected from Andrea and became my ally, or so I thought. Drew, when she's not obnoxious, is a pretty sweet kid. Andrea, I could always handle.

But today, as I lie on my bed with a set of new bruises on top of last week's bruises, calculating how many days I'll have to stay out of school until I look all right and trying not to play the memory tape of how it looks and feels to have a woman beating you down when you're supposed to be turning into a man—I think to myself, if I call CPS right now and show them my arms and my jaw and my back, I'm out of here. They don't visit anymore because our situation has been “stable” for so many years. Those caseworkers are overloaded and any kid they can let slide, they let slide. But if I called them—or the cops, for that matter—I could get my revenge on Stephanie right now.

I pray about this to Saint Gabriel as I lie on my back, holding a package of frozen peas against my jaw. I pray to him and tell him he needs to help me figure this thing out. I don't want to be Stephanie's punching bag anymore, and I sure don't want to explode someday and start giving it back to her. But do I want to get thrown back into the foster-care pool again? I'm a thirteen-year-old boy, the most unwanted commodity in the child market.

“You're an angel, you figure it out,” I say, and close my eyes, hoping the pain will let me sleep.

When I get back to school, at the end of the following week, I find there are no e-mails for me, either from Heaven or Earth. I send one to Saint Gabriel that bounces back in five seconds from the Mailer Daemon (note irony) saying there is no one at that address. My guardian angel has moved, left no forwarding address. I feel like I'm going to cry, right there in the media center, and then this really weird, spooky thought occurs to me. What if I imagined everything? That's what Jessie thinks. What if I'm really cracking up? I don't have any real evidence there was ever an angel in my life. Maybe I'm like one of those people on truTV who goes into a trance and does stuff and forgets about it, like the guy I just saw who claimed he murdered his wife while he was sleepwalking. Maybe I took the ten dollars out of Stephanie's purse and put it in my own locker. Maybe I did tear up the entry form. Maybe I'm like that guy in
A Beautiful Mind
who can't tell what's really happening and what's in his head. Except for the guy at the cemetery, whom everybody saw, and The Motorcycle Man, who chased after Andrea, I've got no evidence at all. Maybe Jessie is really the best friend I've got, trying to help me because she sees the road I'm going down. My whole body is sort of trembling, like puppies do. If you're that crazy, they do serious stuff to you. Maybe I should tell all this to a counselor, but what if they lock me up this very day in some hospital and never let me out? Maybe I could talk to Father Ruiz again. I hope I haven't imagined
him
.

I feel a sharp pain in my sore arm. I look up and see the jungle of Carolina's curls as she sits down next to me. She's managed to punch me right on a bruise, but when I see her, I forgive her. Her eyes are like blue sparklers and she smells like Coca-Cola today—those flavored lip glosses will kill you.

“Hi, Hunter,” she says in this weird girly voice she never used before.

I rub my arm. “Hi.”

“When can we get together and work on science again?” Her face even looks different. It's that morphing-into-a-woman thing again. So scary. She leans in a little closer. The smell of cola is kind of overpowering.

“I'm … uh … grounded right now. Because of what happened. My sisters ratted me out to my foster mother.”

“Oh.” She tosses curls over her shoulder. “You
were
a very bad boy!”

Huh? We barely even kissed and it was definitely mutual. Okay, I know this is some kind of flirting behavior. I know I'm supposed to want to be a bad boy, but it's not working for me at the moment. I'm tired and sore and if it weren't for Carolina, Jesse probably wouldn't have ratted me out. “One of us should write up our notes on the experiment,” I say. “You have a laptop at home, right?”

She's mad. Her eyes shift somehow. You'd think living with three girls and a psychotic woman would make me able to understand the species. But I don't. “I'm not doing your work for you, if that's what you think!” she says. “And there's another thing I think you should know. Steve Richie has been looking at me. I think he likes me. So I don't think you want to be grounded for too long.”

Now I'm mad. I'm really mad at Jessie and Stephanie and my unreliable angel, but Carolina is the one in front of me. “It's not my
choice
to be grounded,” I say. “And if you like Steve Richie better than me, go for it! Tell him I wish him luck!”

Okay, that was a little angrier than I wanted. She stands up. “I'm getting myself a new lab partner too. Your experiment is lame!”

“I thought it was our experiment!” I say. “But I guess I was wrong.”

A few heads are turning in our direction. She picks up her books. “I'm just glad I found out what you're really like!” she says. “I thought you were nice!” Somehow in whirling to leave she manages to catch my sore arm one more time with her notebook. I think girls have some kind of radar for finding wounds.

I can't win even with the angels on my side.

The bus lets us off. The Skylark Pest Control van is still across the street. One of those houses must have a big problem. As usual, Jessie marches into the house silently, ahead of me. As usual, Andrea isn't there. What do they do to you in high school that you never get home on time? I consider telling Jessie I broke up with Carolina, but I don't really want to give her the satisfaction. I check the refrigerator door to make sure it's not my night to cook and spread my homework on the kitchen table. I'm just starting to concentrate when I hear the car. Over the engine and through a solid door, I hear Drew, her voice rising and falling like a British ambulance. Knowing Drew, this could be anything from a major injury to some kid taking her favorite crayon. I open the back door to see if I can help and Drew hurls herself against my legs. “Stop her, Hunter! Don't let her give me to a man! She wants to give me to a man!”

I look to Stephanie, who is wearily dragging her blazer and laptop from the back seat. I know this can't be right. If anything, Stephanie would
sell
Drew to a man.

“Look how she runs to you!” Stephanie's eyes stab me as she walks past. “You've completely undermined my authority around here.”

I don't rise to the bait. I'm still healing. “What's going on?” I try to pry Drew off my legs.

“I'll explain it to you.” Steph is still shedding baggage. “Drew, go to your room, now!”

“Nooooo! Hunter, stop her! I don't want to go to that man!”

Stephanie grabs Drew's arm and wrenches her off me so hard I almost fall. “He is not your father!” she shrieks. “But I AM YOUR MOTHER!” She punctuates this last sentence with four loud smacks on Drew's butt. She's never hit Drew or any of the girls before.

Drew's hands fly to her backside and a sort of delayed-reaction howl comes out of her mouth.

“You go to your room now or I'll really fix you!” Stephanie fakes a move toward Drew, who runs away, still holding herself. Her door slams like a gunshot. I'm amazed all this racket hasn't brought Jessie out of her room, but I guess she's sulking too loud to hear anything.

“What are you staring at?” Stephanie asks me, even though I'm not. “Don't you think she needs some discipline? She's completely spoiled, thanks to you.”

I get a spooky feeling she's talking to Mike, not me. I'm not the only crazy one in the house, after all.

“What's she so upset about?”

Stephanie sits down heavily at the kitchen table. “I'm still determined that she have a modeling career, despite your sabotage. Some little girls would be thrilled.…”

“But what set her off today?”

She rummages in her purse and shows me a classified she's torn out of the paper.

MODEL SEARCH—LOOKING FOR ADORABLE GRLS
, 5-14.
PHOTO LAYOUTS, PORTFOLIO QUALITY. HAVE CONTACTS IN NY AND HLLYWD. HUGE $$$$ IF THE RIGHT LOOK. LIVING DOLLS STUDIO
954-555-6636.

While I struggle to choke down a gasp of horror, Stephanie is still talking. “I called the number and the man said a girl Drew's age could make a lot of money if she had the right pictures. She spends a whole day in the studio with him, and then we only buy the prints we like.”

“And the Internet buys the prints you don't know about! Stephanie, are you crazy? Do you really not know it's not safe to give a little five-year-old as pretty as Drew to some strange guy to take pictures of her? Are you allowed to be there?”

“No, but he explained that stage mothers—and I guess that's what I am now—can upset the kids and mess up the shots. It just figures with your little adolescent boy mind you'd assume it was something dirty. Are you looking at things like that on the Internet?”

My whole body is sweating. “Stephanie, this is important. You have to understand. This is a bad man. He wants to take bad pictures of Drew and sell them to other bad men. This kind of story is on the news all the time. You must have heard of things like this.”

“What I've heard is that you can't break into modeling unless you have good head shots and I can't take competitive pictures of Drew here at home. If this man was doing something illegal, he wouldn't advertise in the paper.”

“Did you see all the escort service ads? Did you see all the massage parlor ads?”

“You filthy … how do you know about things like that? What's wrong with you?”

I look into her eyes and try to understand. Is she so wrapped up in her dream of Drew the baby-supermodel that she won't look at the truth? Or does she know perfectly well what this is and she just doesn't care because she thinks there's money in it?

“Stephanie, please. Don't do this. Drew doesn't want to and it's dangerous. You can't leave her alone with a person like this. He might hurt her. She's just a little girl. You have to protect …” Suddenly out of nowhere I break down and cry. Why isn't there anyone to protect us? We're children. We have no power. If Stephanie really wants to do this, there's nothing I can do to stop her. I put my head on my arms.

“Hunter,” she says almost kindly. “You're tired. You're not thinking clearly. Don't you think the police would arrest him if he were doing something wrong? Do you think I'd put my little girl in jeopardy?”

I don't even pick up my head or stop crying. “I wish Mike was here!” I wail.

When I finally look up, she's gone.

Chapter 9

I come home Saturday afternoon tired, sweaty, rich, and happy, because Saturday has turned into my favorite day of the week. On Saturday, I get to live in another world from the twin horror shows that are my family and school. I'm outside all day. I'm earning money and feeling good about myself. I've started saving up from the money I skim and don't give to Stephanie. With today's take, I'll have over a hundred dollars. I don't know what I'm saving for. Maybe I'm dreaming of running away.