“You don’t even know me.”
“You seem okay.”
“I’m sure your boyfriend would be thrilled if you brought a stranger back with you.”
“He’d be totally fine with it. But it’s okay. I get it. You think you have a better chance here. I used to be like you. Just be careful. This feud you have going with Brick could cost you.”
“It’s not a feud. I think we found a way to keep out of each other’s faces.”
“So you’re not pissed that she sold your suitcases?”
Allie opened her mouth. Nothing came out but an embarrassing sputter.
Allie pushed open the door to her shared room and found it unoccupied. No Brick. She stood a few moments, breathing deeply. Breathing out more fear than she’d known she was holding.
She crossed over to her bed, dropped to her knees, and looked underneath. She was not surprised to see nothing there.
She found The Elf in her office. An office of sorts, anyway. At one time it had apparently been a small den, but now housed a huge, cheap-looking desk overflowing with papers and files.
Utter chaos, Allie thought. How can people work in such chaos?
The Elf was staring at an old computer monitor. Close up, as though her eyes were bad.
No wonder she misses so much of what goes on around here.
“What can I do for you, Alberta?” The Elf asked, the first sign that she had noticed the presence of someone in the room.
“I have a problem.”
“Take a seat, then.”
Allie did. And waited. For a bizarre length of time. Long enough that she began to wonder what she was waiting for. Still The Elf stared at her monitor, her eyes just inches from the screen.
Allie was finding it hard to sit still. Her mood felt like electricity firing off little charges in her muscles. She wanted The Elf to do something. To help her not feel this way anymore. But she knew it was highly unlikely The Elf had anything nearly so useful up her sleeve. Nothing was going to make this all better.
Finally The Elf broke off her attention and turned to face Allie.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m having trouble with my roommate.”
The Elf sighed. “What sort of trouble?”
“She stole my suitcases and sold them.”
For a moment, nothing. No reaction.
Then, “See, this is why sometimes it’s better not to bring things of value into a home like this.”
“You’re seriously blaming her stealing my suitcases on the fact that I have suitcases?”
“No. I guess not.” Another big sigh. Another long wait. “It’s a serious allegation. How do you know it was her?”
“Because she told . . . everybody . . . what she did.”
Allie had no idea how many of the girls Brick had told. She knew only that she didn’t want to bring Jasmine into this mess. She didn’t even want to mention her name.
“What would you like me to do? Do you want me to talk to Lisa?”
“She’s not going to change her ways just because you talk to her. And even if she did, that isn’t going to get my suitcases back.”
“We could discuss it with the social worker who oversees this home.”
“I didn’t know one did. I haven’t even met that person yet.”
“Well, you’re new. Do you want to report this to the police?”
Allie opened her mouth, then closed it again. She knew the next words to come out of her would carry a lot of weight. They would determine her immediate future. And still she didn’t know the right thing to say. Getting her roommate arrested was big. A radical, dangerous act. Maybe better to do nothing at all. Except . . . until she stood up for herself, this would never end. Brick would push her. And push her. And push her. It was a game now. One Allie didn’t want to play, but she was mired up in it all the same. It would go on until Allie owned nothing at all. And she already owned so little. So close to nothing. How much more could she afford to lose?
Allie’s whole body felt strangely awake and alive. It was that feeling only danger can produce. She felt herself poised at the edge of a high cliff, her toes lapping over the edge. And no real option for backing up.
She took a deep breath and jumped.
“Yes. I want to report it to the police.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lights-Out, in More Ways than One
“I can’t believe you did that,” Jasmine said.
They stood at the living room window together, Jasmine holding one side of the curtain back. They watched the two uniformed policemen walk away. Walk back toward their patrol car.
“I know,” Allie said. “It’s weird. It’s big. Or it feels big anyway. But I had to do it. Thank you for telling the police what she told you.”
“Yeah. Whatever. But . . .”
Allie followed Jasmine’s eyes to see why her sentence had stalled. Brick was coming home. Walking down the street toward New Beginnings. She was looking down, tapping on a smartphone she held in one hand.
“Did she always have a phone?” Allie asked.
“Not that I know of. Maybe that’s what she bought with your suitcase money.”
“Damn. I should have sold those suitcases and bought a phone. I didn’t get to bring mine. And I still don’t know why not.”
Allie silently noted, as she heard herself speak, that she sounded outwardly calm. It didn’t even feel like something she was doing on purpose. There was a ball of fear inside, one she had not yet tapped into. It felt as though there was no door into it. No access. Not that she wanted to access it.
“Because there’s nobody on the other end paying the bill anymore. Think she even sees the cops yet?”
“Apparently not.”
But the cops saw her. Allie could tell. They had stopped on the sidewalk by their patrol car and seemed to be waiting to talk to her. After all, they had her description, and it was a good one. None of that “average height, brown hair, brown eyes” muddle. Blonde dreadlocks. How often do you see a teenage girl with blonde dreadlocks?
A mere ten steps from the cops, Brick seemed to notice something in her peripheral vision, above the small screen in her hand. A flash of blue, maybe.
She stopped cold. Looked up at the cops. The cops looked back.
“She sees them now,” Jasmine said.
For one strange, frozen moment, nobody and nothing moved. Not inside the window. Not on the street out front.
Then Lisa Brickell broke in the opposite direction and ran like a thief.
Fitting, Allie thought.
It took the younger of the two cops only ten or twelve running steps to catch her. He dragged her back by one upper arm and loaded her into the rear of the patrol car. Just the way you see on TV, with one hand on top of her head.
Just before the cops closed the door on her, Brick looked up to the house and saw Allie and Jasmine standing at the window watching. Jasmine dropped the curtain, but not nearly fast enough.
“At least she helped your case by running,” Jasmine said.
“I just hope they don’t bring her back here tonight. Or, you know . . . ever. But the way the cops talked about it . . . What did they mean about ‘citing her out’? I was embarrassed to ask because I figured it was one of those things everybody knows but me.”
“It means they write her something like a ticket. And she has to pay a fine. If she can’t pay the fine she might have to do a few days in jail or juvie, but she has time to come up with some money to pay it. So for the next month at least she’ll still live here. And she’s going to kill you.”
Allie laughed. Or tried to, anyway. A sound came out, but not the sound she had intended.
“Not literally, though.” A silence. Too long a silence. “Right?”
Jasmine flipped her head toward the back of the house. Allie followed her out into the yard. The sun felt strong, the air surprisingly clear for downtown. A warm breeze was holding the smog at bay. It felt wrong. It felt as though the w
orld was going on with its business, painfully unaware of the disaster that was Allie’s life. That didn’t seem fair.
They sat in Jasmine’s weed clearing, their knees close.
Allie had to wait for Jasmine to light a cigarette. Wait to hear what her only friend had to say. How bad Allie’s future might truly be.
“Maybe literally,” Jasmine said. “Or maybe not literally kill you kill you, but then you have to think whether killing you is the only thing she can do that would scare you.”
“I outweigh her at least.”
“You don’t outweigh her boyfriend.”
A cold tingle in Allie’s gut. She spoke around it as best she could.
“She has a boyfriend?”
“Oh yeah. He was in jail just a few months ago. Not sure the whole story of why, but it was bigger than stealing somebody’s suitcases. He was inside for years. He drives a motorcycle. Big guy. Last time a girl made trouble for Brick, she had her boyfriend hold the girl for her. She didn’t kill her. But the girl wound up in the hospital with, like, two hundred stitches. The girl didn’t dare rat, so Brick never got in trouble for it. She just walked away.”
A cold, clammy feeling gripped Allie’s stomach. Wet. Liquid fear. A sensation Allie couldn’t imagine living with for long. At the same time she knew it would not be going on its way anytime soon.
She never answered, but Jasmine must have seen the fear in her eyes.
“I tried to tell you, Allie. I tried to warn you. I said this thing was for real. Seriously dangerous. That she was really crazy, not just the way people usually mean it when they say that word.”
“Yeah, I know. You did.”
Allie’s head spun with possible retreat plans. She could go to The Elf. Get herself placed somewhere different. Hell, if she had to she could even do something to get arrested. At least in police custody she would be safe from Brick. She tried not to picture where on her body that poor girl had needed all those stitches.
Not her face. Please don’t let it have been her face.
“I just . . . ,” Allie began. Then her thoughts ran dry.
“I know. Where you come from, nothing was ever so dangerous.”
“Right!”
It was a small comfort, to be understood.
“Welcome to the real world, Allie. Safe is not a guarantee.”
They sat for a long time, Allie twisting her body slightly to get more upwind of the smoke. She hated breathing anybody’s smoke.
“So,” Allie said, continuing to nurse that liquid fear. “That offer to go with you still hold?” She was half kidding. Or maybe one-quarter kidding.
“Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll probably go tonight or tomorrow. Just in case she found out I talked to the cops, too.”
“I’m not sure it has to be anything so radical as running away,” Allie said. She was lying on her back on Jasmine’s roommate’s bed—after a dinner that Allie had not so much as nibbled—waiting to see if Brick was coming back. And thinking about her mother. Picturing her face. Wishing they were home together. “I could ask them to put me in a different home.”
“They don’t usually have openings. You were lucky to hit an opening here.”
“This is lucky? Where would I have gone if I was unlucky?”
“Probably that big juvenile detention place downtown. You think this place is bad? You don’t want to go there. That place is hell compared to this.”
“Oh,” Allie said.
Then she let a long silence fall for lack of anything helpful—or even coherent—to say.
“I just couldn’t stand her taking my stuff,” Allie said. Probably a good hour of silence later. “About a week ago I had all this stuff. I never even thought about it. I just sort of took it for granted. I’d always had enough stuff. You know. Everything you need and most of what you want to be happy. Then the social worker showed up and made me leave most of it behind. What I had to leave behind . . . it feels like me. I’m not even sure who I am without it. I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those people who’s all about their stuff. But now I just have these two bags’ worth. Then Brick starts going through it and taking the best of it for herself. And she wasn’t going to stop. You know that as well as I do. She would have taken everything I had if I hadn’t stood up to her. I mean, really.” She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at Jasmine, who looked back. Right into each other’s eyes. “What was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, Allie. I really don’t. That’s a tough one. I figure the minute you got thrown into a room with her, your life was more or less over.”
Jasmine’s roommate showed up about an hour later. A plump, round-faced girl with big hair and a knowing face. She looked at Allie trespassing on her bed and said nothing for a time. Just hung in the doorway as if trying to figure out where things would go from there.
“Hey,” Jasmine said to her. “Is there anything . . . and I mean anything . . . I could say or do to convince you to room with Brick just for a little while? I mean, if she even comes back. If she doesn’t, you get your own room.”
“Nothing. Nuh uh. No way. Not one single thing. Up to and including ‘That hard thing I’m holding to the back of your head is a loaded gun. Very high caliber.’ Nope, not doing that. Sorry your new friend here is gonna die. We’re not wishing it on you, girl.” She said that last sentence in Allie’s direction.
“Hmm,” Jasmine said.
Allie took heart at that simple sound. Maybe Jasmine had another idea up her sleeve. Maybe she really was serious about offering Allie some kind of protection. Or assistance, at least. Or, failing that, friendship. Someone who was on her side.
“Anything I can do to convince you to slip downstairs after lights-out and sleep on the couch?” Jasmine asked her roommate.
The girl—Bella might have been her name, but Allie didn’t trust her memory—mulled that over for a few seconds. She seemed to be chewing on the idea, almost literally.
“Yeah, okay. I guess that much wouldn’t kill me.” She looked over her shoulder at Allie before walking away. “Good luck,” she said.
Allie waited, wincing slightly, sure the girl would add some comment about how much luck Allie would need.
She never did.
Then again, she didn’t need to. It was a thing that went without saying.
Half an hour before lights-out The Elf came knocking on Jasmine’s bedroom door. Then, immediately after knocking, she tried to let herself in. It didn’t work. Jasmine had wedged the back of a wooden chair underneath the knob.
“Jasmine? Bella? How is this door locked? Did you put a lock on this door? That’s strictly against the rules.”
“No, ma’am,” Jasmine called. “No lock. There’s just something up against the door.”
“Do you know where Alberta is?”
Jasmine looked at Allie, an obvious question in her eyes.
So this is how the new life goes, Allie thought. This is how seriously these girls take the concept of not telling on someone. Jasmine was not going to answer the question without Allie’s permission. There was a whole set of rules, a complex code. And everybody in the world apparently knew it except Allie.
“I’m here,” Allie said.
“Okay. I see. Well . . . I’m going to get Lisa and bring her back. I can understand your being a little nervous, but rest assured—I’ll have a talk with her on the way home and make it clear I won’t tolerate any kind of revenge.”
“Um . . . ,” Allie said. Then she didn’t know where to go from there.
Jasmine rolled her eyes at Allie and Allie rolled hers in return. It felt good to make light of something for a change.
“You can spend one night outside your room if you really feel it’s necessary, Alberta, but tomorrow morning we’re going to sit down and talk, the three of us, and settle this once and for all.”
“Okay,” Allie said. “Thank you.”
Tiny elf footsteps disappeared down the hall.
“Oh, she’s going to t
alk to her,” Jasmine said, stressing the absurdity of the word. “That should turn her into a normal person again. You’ve got nothing to worry about anymore.”
“Yeah,” Allie said. “I feel so much better now. What’s with that lady, anyway? Does she not get how awful Brick is? Or does she just sort of figure we deserve her?”
“I don’t think she knows. Brick’s quite the actress. And besides, the only person who ever thought it was a good idea to tell on her was you.”
Less than an hour later they heard the front door of the house open and close. Allie lay awake in the dark, her eyes open wide. She couldn’t see Jasmine well in the dim light, but she found it hard to imagine her friend was asleep.
“You awake?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Allie waited, desperately trying to breathe, her panic lodged in her chest. Not like an obstacle she couldn’t breathe around. More like a paralyzing agent that prevented her diaphragm from functioning, creating even more panic.
She heard Brick’s footsteps fall along the hall. Past the barricaded bedroom door. She waited for that moment when Brick opened the door to her—and Allie’s—room and saw that Allie was gone.
Nothing happened.
The door opened. Then it closed.
Somehow life went on.
Allie breathed as deeply as possible until her chest eased some.
Had all that buildup been for nothing? Somehow it felt logical to assume that it had. Girls cutting each other in group homes in “the system”? That was the stuff of TV movies. Everybody was being too dramatic.
It made so much more sense to think so, and felt more like the world Allie had always known.
She lay awake for a time, revising her own predicament in her head. Settling. In time she even slept some.
“Allie,” Jasmine hissed.
Allie sat up fast, almost head-butting her friend, who was leaning over her on the bed.
“What?”
“Brick just went downstairs and let herself outside.”
Allie tried to clear her brain. To come fully awake. She even tried physically shaking the sleep away. But still she had no idea what to make of this news.
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