Chapter Eleven
Define Okay
Polyester Lady’s desk had a ring-shaped coffee stain. Allie couldn’t stop staring at it.
First of all, it was a spectacular desk. Because this was a government office at the Department of Social Services, Allie figured the desk was just old and had been sitting in the room for generations. Probably no one had noticed it turning into a valuable antique. But it had, and it was worth caring for.
Second, the stain was right in front of Allie’s chair, on the non-owner side of the desk. Which meant some visitor had carelessly left it.
If this had been Allie’s desk, she could not have forced herself to cede her irritation over that thoughtlessness. She already couldn’t, and she might never sit in this office again.
All of these thoughts provided an effective distraction from the more crucial thoughts. Thoughts like Please let this be Mom I talk to. Not Dad. I’m too mad at Dad and we never talk to each other in a way that means anything anyway.
And, What is she going through where she is?
And, When will I see her again?
“I’ll give you a signal,” Polyester Lady said, holding up three fingers. “I’ll signal you at three minutes left, two minutes left, one minute left. I don’t mean to sound callous, but inmates can only call collect, and somebody has to be picking up the tab here.”
Why don’t I have money? Allie wondered. I always did before. Why wasn’t that on the printed list of things I was supposed to pack before leaving the house?
The phone rang. Allie crystallized into a solid block of fear. She wasn’t sure exactly why. Once upon a time she had talked to her parents every time she turned around. The most recent example of once upon a time had been yesterday.
This should be easy, she thought.
It didn’t make it any easier to think so.
“Yes, I’ll accept the charges,” Polyester Lady said.
She extended the dangerous phone in Allie’s direction.
Allie stared at it for a couple of beats too long. Then she reached out and took it. Swallowing with difficulty, her eyes glued to that maddening coffee stain, she held the phone carefully to her ear.
“Allie?” Her mom. “Honey? Are you there?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
It struck Allie as a ridiculous question and left her literally speechless. Like something from the theater of the absurd. Still, that ring of coffee taunted her. Just use a coaster, you know?
“Honey? Are you there?”
She was. But she had been lost for a moment, drowning in the emotion of a reaction to her mother’s familiar voice.
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“Are you okay? Where do they have you?”
“In a sort of a . . . group home . . . type thing.”
“Is it okay there?”
“Depends on your definition of okay, I guess.”
Much to Allie’s alarm, she could hear her mother dissolve into sobs.
“Honey, I’m so sorry,” her mom said.
But Allie didn’t want to hear that her mom was sorry. She wanted to hear the parts of the situation that didn’t seem to go without saying. Why. How long. The meaty stuff like that.
“I need to know what happened,” she said.
“It was . . . your father and I . . . Well. You know how things were really good with your dad’s business in the last few years . . .”
“Mom. I’m sitting in the office of a social worker who’s going to give me finger signals when I’m running out of phone time. Because a collect call is not within my budget these days. I need the short version. You and Dad were arrested and charged with . . .”
“Tax fraud.”
Allie stared at the ring of stain in silence for a moment and watched it move—float—in a way it should not have. Maybe she was just staring too hard. Or maybe not.
“So . . . ,” Allie said. Then she paused, waiting to see if this was something she could bring herself to say or not. “So . . . when you had the pool installed in the backyard . . . and when Dad bought the boat, you could have just given the money to the IRS instead, and we’d all be at home now, and none of this would be happening?”
Silence on the line, not counting a sob or two.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, Allie. It’s easy to go back and see how to do things—”
“No. No, Mom. Don’t even. It’s always easy. When you owe taxes, you pay them. And everybody knows it. Why didn’t you tell me this was about to happen? Give me a chance to be halfway prepared.”
“We didn’t know we’d be arrested, honey.”
“Yes you did! I saw you guys whispering to each other and then shutting up when you saw me coming.”
“We suspected, but we didn’t know for sure.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re so . . . well . . . you know how you are.”
“No. How am I?”
“You have these . . . rigid ideas about what people should do.”
Again the coffee stain spun slightly. Allie raised her eyes to Polyester Lady to see if she had any polyester fingers raised. Not yet.
“You’re seriously insulting me for being honest?”
“Of course not. Not at all, honey. I’m just trying to tell you why we were afraid to get into it with you.”
A movement caught Allie’s eye. She saw three fingers go up.
“Look, we can talk about this later, Mom. Right now I need to know if you’re getting out on bail.”
A pause. Then, “No.”
“The judge didn’t give you bail? You’re not murderers.”
“No, he did. He set bail. It was kind of high because I guess they thought maybe we were a flight risk. But we got a bail amount. But . . . Oh. How do I put this? When the IRS finds out you owe them a lot of money . . . but they don’t know how much yet . . . they have to do a big investigation to find out what income was hidden. Until they do, they pretty much slap a lock on everything you own. Literally or figuratively. Or both. The house. The boat. The bank account. Not technically ours at this point. None of it. None of it is anything we can access right now.”
Allie said nothing. Because she had no idea what to say. She wanted to know if they would lose the house she’d lived in since birth. But if she asked, she might find out.
Polyester Lady folded down one of the three fingers.
“Most people have relatives,” her mom said. “To go to a bail bondsman and put something up for them. But all we have is Nanna and Pop-Pop, and their nest egg is just barely covering their nursing home, and it’s disappearing fast. They can’t go anywhere anyway . . .”
“Right. I’m clear on our lack of relatives. Right now especially. Aren’t you worried these phone calls from the jail get monitored or taped or something? Or overheard by somebody? And here you are more or less admitting to me that you guys are guilty of tax fraud . . .”
“We have no intention of trying to claim innocence, honey. We’re just going to throw ourselves on the mercy of a judge and hope he goes easy.”
“So we’re talking years. I’m out here on my own for years. In two and a half years I’ll just be grown and I’ll turn eighteen and walk out of the system on my own? That’s what I’m being told here?”
Allie looked up to see only one polyester finger.
“Not years. I mean, maybe not. Maybe we’ll get lucky. A year or two maybe.”
“Two years qualifies as years.”
The one finger began to wave.
“Look, Mom. I’ve got to go.”
“Honey, I just can’t tell you how—”
But Polyester Lady was signaling Allie to set the receiver back on its base. So she did.
She sat a moment staring at that coffee ring.
“Doesn’t that drive you crazy?” Allie asked.
“Doesn’t what drive me crazy?”
“That stain.”
“No, why would it? Desk still works f
ine.”
“It would drive me crazy because I’d keep thinking about the person who was so careless with their mug.”
“I never pay any attention to it. Mind if I ask you a question? Why did they charge your mom, too? Wasn’t it your dad’s business income? I’m not trying to be nosy, I swear. It’s just hard to see a young girl lose both parents to jail at once. So I just wondered . . .”
“She’s his CPA.”
“Got it,” Polyester Lady said.
Allie sat in the Polyester Lady’s car, staring at her hands. Until the car pulled over to the curb and stopped. When she looked up, Allie was surprised to see they were back at New Beginnings.
“I thought I had to go to school.”
“I told them your first day would be tomorrow. I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get you a call from one of your parents. And I knew how important that was to you. So just take the day. Rest. Take a nap or something.”
“Thanks.”
Allie climbed out of the car. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been. She felt limp and wrung out. For a moment it occurred to her to ask her social worker’s name again, but she never found the energy.
She slammed the car door and walked up the concrete path.
The door to the home was locked, so Allie had to ring the bell.
The Elf answered after a time, pulling back a curtain behind the glass insets of the door. Frowning. She opened the door a few inches but didn’t seem inclined to let Allie by.
“You’re supposed to be in school.”
“My social worker says I can start tomorrow.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Because after she signed me up we had to go to her office. So I could talk to one of my parents. And she didn’t know how long that would take . . .”
The Elf’s eyes narrowed.
It dawned on Allie that her new living situation was not only overcrowded and potentially dangerous, but also highly conditional. Maybe if she didn’t have the right answers at the door she wouldn’t be allowed in at all. Clearly there were a lot of things that could go wrong here. Too bad Allie didn’t know what any of them were.
“You realize I’ll have to call your social worker and verify your story.”
“Whatever,” Allie said, suddenly twice as exhausted.
The Elf stepped aside and allowed her in.
“I’m going to take a nap,” Allie said. “My social worker’s suggestion. And you can check that story with her.”
She waved weakly as she trudged up the stairs.
Allie lay on “her” bed for a few minutes, but a nap seemed out of the question. The mattress was horrible. Lumpy and ancient and thin. And her carbs-only breakfast had long since abandoned her, which was never a good recipe for sleep. Nothing like low blood sugar to keep you staring at the ceiling.
Instead Allie stared at her socks for a second or two, then sat up sharply. The sudden movement made her head spin.
She leaned over the edge of the bed and pulled out one of her two suitcases. She hadn’t had time to unpack them, and she didn’t plan to spend this free moment on organization. She just wanted to check on her socks.
There were no socks. Then again, her crazy roommate had pulled all of her belongings out onto the floor, and Allie had hastily gathered it all up again. Maybe the socks had landed in the other bag. She pulled out the second suitcase and flipped it open. Right in the middle, right on top of everything, lay four pairs of socks. White. Floppy. No elastic. Holes.
Allie jumped to her feet, fighting off another round of dizziness. She crossed the room to the dresser on Brick’s side and opened the top drawer. In it were four of her six pairs of fabulous socks. The pairs that were not currently on Allie’s—or her roommate’s—feet.
She took them back and tucked them under her mattress, gathered up the four pairs of white socks, put them in Brick’s dresser drawer where they belonged, and pushed the suitcases back under the bed.
She lay awake for a long time, sure she would never nap. But even so, it felt like a little bit of heaven. Just to lie there. In the quiet. With no one around to challenge her in any way.
It felt like a moment that belonged to Allie, a luxury she’d been unsure she would ever enjoy again.
In time she did manage to drift off to sleep.
Allie woke with a start, in pain. Someone’s knees had landed on her back and one of her arms was being twisted up to meet her shoulder blade.
“Hey!” she yelled, hoping it would be loud enough to bring The Elf running.
“You went in my drawers?” The voice was a throaty hiss near her ear. She could feel the breath of it. “You could die for less than going in my drawers. That dresser is mine. You don’t even touch it! You don’t even brush against it! You have no idea what I would do!”
Allie gathered up all her strength and rolled over fast, throwing Brick onto the hardwood floor.
Allie jumped to her feet. Ready. But, oddly, Brick stayed down. She did not attack again.
“The dresser is yours,” Allie said. “I hear that. I get it.” Her voice trembled but she tried to ignore it. “But the socks are mine. You never again take anything of mine and put it in your dresser, and I absolutely promise I won’t touch your things. You don’t steal my things and put them in with your things again. I don’t touch anything of yours ever. Deal?”
Brick opened her mouth. But before she could speak, they both looked up to see The Elf standing in the bedroom doorway.
“What on earth is going on up here?”
Brick looked to Allie. Challenging her. Daring her to answer.
“Nothing,” Allie said. “She just tripped. We’re okay. For a minute I thought we had a problem, but I think it’s all worked out now.”
And, with the absolute overconfidence of youth, Allie believed that what she had just said was true. That the way she had summarized it was the way it would be.
Chapter Twelve
Weed Oasis
It was Allie’s first Saturday at New Beginnings, about four days later, when she walked into her shared bedroom to find Brick lying on her back on the bed counting money. More money than it looked like a girl in this place should be able to have. Twenties. Allie couldn’t see exactly how many. At least five or six.
Brick looked up into Allie’s face and smiled an unsettling smile. Allie said nothing. Brick began to hum a vaguely familiar tune. Some ancient song from long before the turn of a couple of centuries. One of those tunes everybody more or less knows whether they were alive back then or not.
Allie sat briefly on her bed, hoping the humming would end soon. She hated any kind of distraction like that. Humming, singing. Foot tapping. She couldn’t remain in her own head, her own thoughts, and block out other stimuli.
A twitchy moment or two later she got up and left the room to shake the annoyance. Just as she was moving down the hall she realized what the tune was. That old song about being in the money again, after the Great Depression.
Allie trotted downstairs, thinking it would be nice to sit out in the sun in the backyard.
It was a sprawling, messy patch of yard, a mix of concrete and chin-high weeds. Allie whacked through the weeds with the backs of her hands, looking for a suitable spot to sit. When she found a small clearing, it was already occupied. Jasmine was there, hugging her drawn-up knees and smoking a cigarette. The tips of her long, straight hair touched the dirt.
“Shh,” Jasmine said, drawing out the sound. She held one finger to her lips. “Don’t tell on me.”
Smoking was one of the transgressions that could get a girl ejected from New Beginnings. One of many.
“I won’t,” Allie said.
Without even asking first, she sat cross-legged in Jasmine’s tiny clearing. Because if she had asked permission she might not have gotten it. Allie missed having friends, such as they were. Having anyone. Not being the only person on her lonely, solitary planet. She wished she could call Angie. But she had no money and no
phone. Besides, Angie’s cell phone number was on Allie’s phone, at home. She didn’t know it by heart.
Jasmine did not seem to object.
“I’m really not a person who tells on other people,” Allie said. “I mean, especially if it’s none of my business like this. I only said that because . . . well, I didn’t know what to say. Somebody takes your things like that and asks what you’re going to do about it. And there’s not a damn thing you can do, but you don’t want to say that . . .”
“The less you say to Brick the better.”
“Other than you, she’s the only one here who even talks to me.”
“Don’t take it personally. It’s just that they don’t want to get on the wrong side of her. They’re mostly okay, the girls here. With maybe one or two exceptions. But nobody wants trouble, you know? So they just keep their heads down. They don’t want to seem like they’re taking sides.”
“I guess.” Allie wondered what she would do in their situation. Would she stand up for the embattled girl? She hoped so. “You didn’t just keep your head down.”
“Ah,” Jasmine said, and flicked her ashes off into the weeds. “I won’t be here much longer. I’m about to take off again.”
“You mean . . .”
“Do I mean what?”
“Never mind. None of my business.”
“Yes. The answer is yes. I mean take off. As in, without official permission.”
“And go where?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“Then why even be here to begin with?”
“Well, you know. I’m sixteen. I’m not supposed to be living with him. If I get in trouble I’m back on the radar and then I end up here. If I can lay low I can be there. Just depends on how things go.”
Allie listened to the silence for a moment and nursed her disappointment.
“Too bad,” she said. “One girl in the whole place who talks to me . . . and isn’t crazy . . . and you’re leaving.”
“Come with me.”
It was a statement so out of place that Allie actually backed up some. As much as possible while sitting cross-legged. Her upper body leaned back, in any case.
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