Pieces of Me (16 page)

“I'll get it,” Leo said.

I hadn't seen him come across the street. I pulled a hand back through my hair. “Thank you.”

He picked up the plastic garbage bag and looked at Dylan, still sitting on the pavement, stubbornly driving his train around his outstretched legs.

“I could carry this,” Leo said. “You could pull him, I mean, if you want to.”

What I wanted was to make Dylan walk, because it wasn't that far and I was mad. But that would have been stupid.

I blew out a breath that made the wisps of hair around my face fly into the air. “Yeah, that would help,” I said. I pulled the wheeled platform the few feet to where Dylan sat. “Get on,” I said. “And hold on tight to that train, because if it falls off I'm not stopping for it.”

He smiled at me. “Yes, you will,” he said. He knew when I was full of crap.

I shook my head and tried to look stern. “No, I won't.”

Dylan nodded. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“No. No. No,” I said. Considering that he was always dropping something and I always went back and got it, it was a stupid argument. But it made him laugh.

We walked a block answering each other back and forth until he did let go of the train—probably on purpose—and I did stop to pick it up, and then we both laughed.

When we got to the Laundromat, Leo carried the bag inside for me and set it on an empty washer. “If you want to throw any of your stuff in, you can,” I said as I started sorting. “If you want to.”

I didn't look at him because I just had a feeling that if I did, he'd take off. After a minute he opened the old canvas pack he carried and dumped his stuff into the washer. Then he fished in his pocket and handed me two quarters. It felt weird to take the kid's money, but I did.

I dropped into a chair by the window, where I could keep an eye on the washers and Dylan, who was driving his train around the bank of machines. Leo leaned on the wall by the dryers. After a few minutes he walked across the room and pulled a flyer off the end wall. He leaned over a washer. I couldn't see what he was doing with the paper. Finally he straightened. Somehow he'd turned it into a small ball. He bent down to Dylan and said something. Dylan nodded, and the ball went into the back of one of the train cars. In a few minutes another flyer turned into another ball. A third one became a bird that Dylan flew around the room. By the time everything was dry, Dylan was getting whiny again.

“We'll take this stuff home and then we'll have some lunch and go to the park,” I told him.

Leo had stuffed his clean clothes into his backpack. When I tied the top of the second bag of laundry, he took it from me. I carried the other bag and pulled Dylan like before. Leo walked beside him, and Dylan talked pretty much the whole way. When we got back to the building, Leo brought the bag upstairs.

“Have lunch with us,” I said.

He shook his head and took a step backward. “No. I can't,” he said.

“Please, please, please,” Dylan begged.

Suddenly I didn't want to do the soup line. I still had a bunch of quarters.

Maybe I could score a leftover pizza at Pizza Man. “Pizza,” I said, hoping that would convince him.

“Yay!” Dylan cheered, hopping around the room on one foot.

“Okay,” Leo said.

We walked over to Pizza Man, and for once Dylan didn't complain. I stood in line at the takeout window with my bag of quarters, hoping they'd have a missed pickup. They did. They had two of the small personal pizzas. One was bacon and pepperoni and the other was veggies. For the price of one, I got both.

We took the pizza to the park, sat on a bench by the swings and ate. We probably spent an hour on the swings and the climber after lunch. Finally I pulled a plastic garbage bag out of my backpack. “C'mon,” I called to Dylan.

“What are you doing?” Leo asked.

“Collecting returnables,” I said as Dylan raced up with a wine bottle.

“Is this good?” Dylan asked.

“Very good,” I said. He tore across the grass toward the big maple, where we usually found as many as a dozen empty beer bottles.

Leo spotted two wine-cooler bottles. With an extra set of eyes, we got the bag filled pretty quickly. Leo took it, and I let Dylan climb up on my back for the ride to the recycling center. When I turned around from the counter with the money, Leo was gone.

“Hey, kiddo, where did Leo go?” I said.

Dylan shrugged. “He said he had to go.”

I piggybacked Dylan all the way home, hoping Leo would just appear again out of nowhere, but he didn't.

thirteen

Q came home with food from the hotel—chicken, rice, a salad with fancy lettuce. “This is our last meal from there,” he said. “Kevin got another job.”

We'd been getting stuff about twice a week from the hotel kitchen. I wondered what would happen to the food now, and I was really glad I'd met Lucy. I told Q about Leo spending part of the day with us.

“I wish he'd just stayed here,” he said. “He shouldn't be wandering around by himself.”

“Maybe he'll come back,” I said. I didn't know if it was what I wanted or not. Dylan liked Leo, and I didn't want him to have any more people who just disappeared from his life. He never said a word about his mother or his brother and sister, but sometimes he'd sit up in the middle of the night, crying and shaking. He wasn't exactly awake, but he wasn't quite asleep either. Pretty much all I could do was hold on to him until it stopped. Suddenly he'd be asleep in my arms. I'd lay him down and usually spend the rest of the night watching him. In the morning it would be like it hadn't happened.

After we'd eaten, Q got the poker book out of the pocket of his jacket and went to sit by the window where the light was best.

“What're you reading about?” I asked. “The rules of the game?”

He shook his head. “Strategy. I figured it wouldn't hurt if I could learn more about odds and stuff.”

I figured it wouldn't hurt if Q just stopped playing poker all together, but I kept that to myself. That night, after Dylan was asleep, Q and I had sex again. I'd given up on it ever being the way it was in books. It was okay and all, being so close to Q, but I'd always figured it would be special somehow, and it was just…ordinary.

Monday morning I was taking Dylan to the thrift store to look for shoes when I realized Leo was behind us. I stopped and pretended to tie my shoe. Dylan looked around the way I figured he would and caught sight of Leo.

“Leo!” he yelled, a big grin lighting up his face.

Leo walked up to us.

“I'm going to get shoes,” Dylan said. “You come.”

I didn't wait for Leo to answer. I handed him the leather strap so he could pull Dylan up the sidewalk.

We found a pair of sneakers for Dylan. When we came out, we headed for the library, and Leo just seemed to get pulled along. I decided to try Pizza Man again for lunch. No pizza this time, but I did manage to get an order of macaroni and cheese with ham that hadn't been picked up. The three of us ate it out of the foil pan with plastic forks, sitting on the same bench in the park as we did before. This time Leo disappeared while I was pushing Dylan on the swings. I thought I saw him when I was walking back with Lucy that night, loaded with a bag in each hand because it had been a good night. I looked across the street and then back over my shoulder, but he wasn't there.

I packed the cooler and put two jars of peanut butter in the window, but once I lay down, I couldn't get to sleep. Dylan was curled up in a tiny ball in his sleeping bag. Q was sprawled on his stomach, one arm thrown over me.

When I heard the noise, the first thing I figured it could be was a mouse. It was that kind of scratching sound. Then I heard it again, and something made me get up. My heart was pounding, and there wasn't really any reason to go and look, but I had to do it. I pulled on my boots before I opened the door, because if whatever was out there was small and furry with a long tail, it was going to get its ass kicked.

It took me a second to see him in the faint light in the hall. For a second I thought it was a bag of clothes someone had dropped at the top of the stairs. Then I saw that it was a person, and a moment after that…oh God…it was Leo.

I ran to him. His face was bloodied. I touched him, and he flinched. “You're okay, you're okay,” I said. “Don't move.” I ran back into the apartment, grabbed Q and shook him awake. “Q, it's Leo. It's Leo. He's hurt.” I grabbed one of my blankets.

Q followed me out. “Oh shit,” he said when he saw Leo.

I knelt on the floor and wrapped the blanket around him. Q crouched beside me. “What happened?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I heard a noise. It was him.” Leo's face was swollen and dark with bruises. “You gotta find a phone,” I told Q. “We have to get an ambulance.”

“No!” Leo whispered, his voice low and scratchy. He tried to get up.

I knew we would all be in a mess if an ambulance came, because police would come too, but that didn't seem to matter. Leo was still trying to get up.

“Help me get him inside,” Q said.

“No,” I said. “He needs an ambulance and a doctor.” I got to my feet. If Q wasn't going to get help, I would.

He grabbed my arm. “What he needs is to get out of this hallway, and so do we, in case whoever did this shows up.”

“Fine,” I said. We half dragged, half carried Leo into the room and got him on my mattress. The whole thing woke Dylan up.

“Maddie?” he called out. I heard the fear in his voice.

I kneeled by his bed. “I'm right here, kiddo.”

He rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing? You woke me up.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Lay down and go back to sleep.”

He squinted across the room. “Maddie, why is Leo on your bed?”

My heart was racing in my chest. Lie or truth? “Leo fell down,” I said. Lie. “He got a bunch of owies.”

“You can fix them, right?”

I nodded. Lie, again.

He reached down, pulled up his blanket and handed it to me. “Leo can have my blankie,” he said.

The back of my throat got tight, and I had to put a hand on my chest to remind myself to breathe. I took the blanket and leaned over to kiss him. “Thanks, kiddo,” I whispered.

One arm came up and around my neck. “I love you, Maddie,” he whispered back.

I hugged him tightly. “I love you too,” I breathed against his neck.

He rolled over and snuggled down into his sleeping bag. I set Fred over his head.

Leo was half sitting on my air mattress, slumped against the wall. I tucked Dylan's blanket around him and went for some water and a towel. Q caught my arm. “No ambulance, Maddie,” he said in a low voice. “He'll run.”

I shrugged off his hand. “I know,” I said. I put warm water in a little plastic bowl I'd gotten at the thrift store for a quarter. Then I got the only clean towel we had and knelt on the floor beside Leo. I dipped the end of the towel in the water and started cleaning his face. He shook, and tears mixed with the blood and dirt on his face, but he didn't make a sound. I didn't even try not to cry. I wiped at the tears and dipped a clean end of the towel in the water.

I could sense Q standing behind me. “The bag of quarters is in my jacket pocket,” I said. “I need Band-Aids and some kind of cream with antibiotics. And aspirin.” I didn't turn around to look at him. “There's an all-night drugstore somewhere. I don't know where.”

And I didn't care. That was his problem. I knew about the all-night drugstore because Hannah had gotten stuff from there one time when I was staying at Pax House and a woman had shown up with her kids after her husband had banged her face into a cement block wall about twelve times.

I heard Q pull on his clothes and get his jacket and boots. He touched my shoulder as he went past me, but he didn't say anything and neither did I.

It took a long time to clean Leo's face. His left cheek was scraped raw. There was a gash over his eye and another cut in his hair. His right eye was swollen shut. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew there had to be bruises. And there was gravel and other crap stuck to his skin.

I threw the towel in the bathtub—it was ruined. Then I got a bottle of water from the cooler, glad that I'd listened to Lucy when she'd pushed me to grab a couple of the bottles we'd found with the wrapped sandwiches at the bakery.

I put the bottle in Leo's hand. He took a drink, coughed and took another and then another.

When Q came back, he had some kind of anti-everything cream in a tube, plus gauze pads and tape. I put cream on most of Leo's face and the back of his right hand and I used the tape to stick one of the gauze pads on top of the cut by his eye. That was all I knew how to do, and I probably wouldn't have known that if I hadn't been at Pax the night that woman came in. I sent a thank-you to Hannah out into the universe.

Leo needed to see a doctor. And I knew that wasn't going to happen. Leo would run. Q was right about that.

Q rolled up his jacket and made a pillow for Leo. Then he made a bed for me on his mattress, rolling up in a blanket on the floor beside it. We didn't talk at all, but when I reached out into the dark for his hand, I found it.

I wanted to run. I thought about it, about sitting up, getting my boots and my backpack and taking off. Q said that foster care was worse than being on the street. But was it? Was this better for Dylan? It wasn't better for Leo. Being here was better than wherever he'd been, but was it better than getting off the street altogether? If I went, Q wouldn't have any choice. He'd have to at least take Dylan somewhere.

Then I thought about Dylan's arm sliding around my neck. If I disappeared, what would that do to him? And what about Leo? I knew in my gut, in a way that I couldn't put into words, that if I was gone Leo would be too. Maybe he'd take off before morning anyway, but I knew he'd run if I did.