The Last Chance Texaco (7 page)

"Go where?" Leon's face hardened. "Not that." He hesitated, clenching his teeth. "Lucy, has a counselor ever asked you to do something like that before?"

"No," I said. It was mostly the truth.

He looked relieved, but he also kept staring at me, like he didn't quite believe me. "Look," he said, hesitating again. "Lucy, I know things have been lousy for you. But I swear to God, Kindle Home is different."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"What?"

"Before. You said there was more I have to do--to keep from being sent away. So what do I have to do?"

He smiled. "Trust us," he said. That was it? That was all he wanted from me? Was this some kind of trick?

I stared out the window for a long time after he said that. For some reason, the fog on the windshield began to clear--I guess because we d stopped talking.

Finally, I looked over at him again and spoke a single word. "Okay."

• • •

Later that afternoon, before any of the other kids were home from school, I was coming down the stairs, and I happened to stop for a second about a third of the way from the landing. Right then, I heard Leon's voice say, clear as a bell, "She was provoked." It was coming from the office just off the foyer down below, and somehow I knew he was talking about me.

"She
says
she was provoked," came the voice of Mrs. Morgan. "She could be lying."

"And so what if she
was
provoked?" said Gina's voice. "She still threw the first punch. These kids are always being provoked. That doesn't mean it's okay to slug someone."

"I'm not saying it is!" Leon said. "I'm just saying she's only been here three days, and she's under a lot of pressure. I say we give her a break."

"No one's saying we should throw her out into a snowbank," Ben said. "We're just saying there have to be consequences to her actions."

"There
will
be consequences," Leon said. "At school. She'll have detention, and she's on probation. But it didn't have anything to do with here, so I don't see why
we
need to give her consequences too."

It was that moment in the week when all four counselors were together at the very same time. And they were using the opportunity to talk about me, about what had happened that morning at school. But how was it that I was able to hear them? I'd been sitting right outside the door when Emil had been having his session with Juan, and I hadn't been able to hear anything at all.

I took a step down the stairway, and the sound of the voices faded away. I returned to the step I'd been on.

"She has so much anger," Gina was saying.

"So do most of these kids," Leon said. "So would you if you were here."

I took a step up the stairway, and the voices disappeared again. So there was something about the acoustics of the front hall, and the transom above the office door, that made it possible to hear what was being said inside that room, but only from that one single step. If you were moving up or down the steps, you wouldn't notice it at all.

I returned to the Magic Step.

"She's convinced we're going to reject her," Leon was saying. "And it's no wonder--rejection is pretty much all she's ever known. Ten different houses in eight years? And then there's the fact that her parents died when she was seven years old. That means she's old enough to remember them."

"So?" Mrs. Morgan said.

"So maybe Lucy thinks we're trying to replace them," Leon said. "Maybe that's part of why she's so afraid of letting any adult get close to her--because she's still afraid of somehow betraying her parents."

Leon knew my file, I had to give him that. But what he was saying was all bullshit, of course. Betraying my parents? Please. It almost sounded to me like Leon was bullshitting the other counselors--telling them what he thought they wanted to hear, so they'd go easier on me.

"You think that's why she punched that kid at school?" Mrs. Morgan was saying. "Because of something that happened eight years ago?"

"I don't know why Lucy did what she did," Leon said. "I bet even she doesn't know. Whatever's going on is probably all unconscious. But I do think the key to her is the fact that she's been abandoned so many times, and that she's terrified of being rejected again. So she pushes people away before they can reject her."

Leon had silenced the other counselors at last.

Then Ben laughed. "Three days, Leon! You got her all figured out in three days?"

"Hey, it makes sense to me," Gina said.

"Oh, it makes sense to me too," Ben said. "And it's not like we haven't seen cases like hers before."

"I'm not saying Lucy is a hopeless case," Mrs. Morgan said. "I'm just saying we need to be careful. We
have
had cases like her before. Remember Luke? And Ruani? And Denise?"

"I remember," Leon said quietly.

"And remember how they ended up?" Mrs. Morgan said.

Leon didn't speak for a second. Then he said, "Lucy's different."

Was I different? I wasn't so sure. But now I knew for a fact that Kindle Home was different, just like Leon had said. The counselors here didn't all see me as damaged goods, beyond repair, fit only to be locked away. And if that was true, it meant one other thing was true too.

Maybe Rabbit Island wasn't inevitable after all.

• • •

So the Kindle Home counselors really did want to help me. But what they wanted wasn't necessarily the same thing as what Emil wanted. And the following week, I had my second session with him.

"Well," he said. "I see it didn't take you long to get into the swing of things here at Kindle Home." This sounded like a snotty reference to my fight with Nate the week before, but he was writing something on his clipboard when he said it, so I couldn't be sure.

"So," he said, "you want to tell me about this fight?"

I thought about what I'd learned on the Magic Step, about Kindle Home being different from other group homes, and what Leon had said in the car, that

I needed to trust the people there. Did that mean I needed to trust Emil too?

What the hell, I thought.

"I bumped against this girl in the hallway," I said. "She said I did it on purpose, but I didn't. Then she and her boyfriend got all mad at me, and told me that I'd better watch out, that they were going to be watching me. Someone had told everyone that I lived here, at a group home, and they were all, like, 'Groupies don't belong at this school.'"

I couldn't help but notice that Emil wasn't writing anything down. Every time he had a thought about something, he wrote that down in great detail. But I guess my version of events wasn't even good enough to be put in my own file.

But Leon had put his butt on the line for me, so I kept going. "Anyway," I said, "I had them both in biology, and they kept calling me groupie' and doing things like knocking over my avocado sprout."

"So," Emil said. "You were feeling singled out because of the fact that you come from a group home."

I nodded. I was surprised. He'd been listening after all.

"And you think violence is an acceptable response to that?"

Leon hadn't meant I needed to trust Emil too.

"Well?" he said accusingly. "Is it?"

"No," I said. "That's not what I'm saying."

He lifted his clipboard, holding it against his chest like some kind of protective vest. "Exactly what are you saying?"

I tried a different approach. "I want to stay here at Kindle Home." This was true. Being at Kindle Home wasn't just about not going to Rabbit Island anymore. Now it was just as much about really wanting to stay.

"Well, isn't that just great?" Emil said, and suddenly, he was writing on his clipboard again. But something told me he wasn't writing down what I'd said about wanting to stay at Kindle Home, or even what Leon had said about my being afraid of rejection. No, he was writing yet another reason why I wasn't fit to be living among normal people, or going to school at their normal high school.

And that's when I knew it didn't matter what I thought about Kindle Home. Because as much as I wanted to stay there, Emil still wanted me gone.

Principal High Expectations gave me eight weeks of detention for punching Nate Brandon in the face. For one hour every day after school, I had to pick up garbage from around the campus, and each day I had to fill at least one big trash bag. And he warned me that if anyone saw me filling my bag with garbage from the Dumpsters, then I'd get four
more
weeks of detention.

That was the bad news. The good news was that Nate Brandon was also given eight weeks of detention doing the very same thing. I was positive that if the principal had had his way, Nate Brandon wouldn't have gotten any detention at all. But Leon had said that stuff about it not mattering who "started" a fight--that all the people involved had to get the exact same punishment. And I think Principal High Expectations was smart enough to know that Leon

was going to check up on him to make sure he'd followed the letter of the law exactly.

At first, I thought there couldn't be enough garbage on that campus to fill one whole trash bag, much less two bags a day for forty days. But no matter how much trash I picked up, there always seemed to be more. And by the following day, it was as if I hadn't picked up any trash at all.

For the first week, I avoided Nate, and he avoided me. But the school was pretty spread out, with lots of long, low buildings, so it was impossible for us to know exactly where the other person was at all times.

The day after my second session with Emil, I was picking up garbage alongside the music building when I spotted a Happy Meal box pushed under some bushes. I wasn't sure who was eating Happy Meals on a high school campus, but this was a real find--with a piece of trash that big, I'd fill my bag that much sooner. I'd still have to spend the rest of the hour wandering around campus looking busy, but I wouldn't have to break my back picking up plastic lids and M&M's wrappers.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk and reached down for the Happy Meal box.

"Hey!" said a voice from the other side of the bushes. "That's mine!"

I jumped in surprise. Of course, it was Nate. He'd been going for the Happy Meal box at the same time I was. I hadn't seen him up close since our fight. When he'd learned I wasn't getting kicked out of biology, he and Alicia had both transferred to a new class.

I stood up, holding the box. "Yeah?" I said. "Then how come I'm the one holding it in my hand?"

"Get choked," he said, that familiar cool tone in his voice. "I saw it first."

"Gag you," I said. But when I took a good look at him at last, I saw the bruise around his eye. It had been over a week since I'd hit him, but it hadn't healed at all. It was this bizarre bluish-purple color, almost like it was paint, and it snaked all the way up to the bridge of his nose.

"Does it hurt?" I said. Suddenly, I really wanted to know.

"No," he said. "But it did at first. It hurt like hell."

"Oh." I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to say to that.

He started to turn away.

"Hold it," I said.

He turned and glared at me. Nate Brandon was a prick, but he didn't look as stupid as I'd thought. It was all in the eyes. He didn't seem quite as cocky as I remembered either. Maybe I'd humbled him a little. He was still way too pretty, even with a black eye and a scowl. But for some reason, with that garbage sack and that shiner, he almost looked like a human being.

I held the Happy Meal box out toward him. "Here," I said. I wasn't sure why I was giving it to him. It just seemed like the thing to do.

"What?" he said. He looked confused.

I kept holding it out. "Go on. Take it."

"What's wrong with it?" Now he looked suspicious.

"Nothing's wrong with it. I'm giving it to you. You saw it first."

Slowly, he took it from me. He was still staring at me, but before he could say anything else, I turned and walked away

• • •

The second I kicked open the front door that night, I knew something was up. Remember that group home sixth sense I mentioned earlier? I could tell there was tension in the air, a prickle of electricity. I hadn't been at Kindle Home two weeks yet, but I'd never known it to be this quiet at four o'clock in the afternoon. Standing in the foyer, I looked over at the office and saw the door was closed. I also heard the soft murmur of voices from behind the door. This wasn't weird--Emil could have been having a session with one of the kids. So why did that door, and those voices, give me such a funny feeling?