by G. Benson
The caseworker had told her that, and Carmen had gone even colder. Being back with her mother was nowhere she wanted to be. Where she had been—with Jia, with Rae—had worked, had felt like safety, a net she’d never before known. It wasn’t one she had wanted to throw her brother into, but she had missed it herself the last few years.
“The caseworker told me Mattie was going back to my mom the next day… I couldn’t run again, because… I couldn’t leave Mattie there alone; it was bad enough at the foster home.”
Carmen couldn’t be with him in the foster home he’d been in, but she could be with him at home. She needed to be with him at home. He had been barely six at that point. Barely six and with a mother who forgot to come home, who lost herself in a bottle, who used drugs like they made her a better person when all they did was flood her and leave her floundering.
“Maybe, uh,” Rae’s voice was rough, “maybe you didn’t deserve that punch, then.”
The clouds were parting again, stars muted between them. The temperature had fallen even more in the last hour, though, and goose bumps prickled along Carmen’s arms. It would most likely start to rain again soon. Carmen shrugged finally. “You didn’t know. I know it looked like I’d run, or taken the easy road. But once they knew my name, I couldn’t give them any kind of story that supported yours.”
Sighing, Rae dropped her head back, staring at the black sky. “Yeah, once they knew I was lying, I said good-bye to any chance of talking my way out. I did thirty days in juvie, then was put back in the system.”
And clearly ran from it immediately.
“I really am sorry.” Carmen didn’t take her eyes from the sky.
“I was so angry at you.”
“I was angry at me too.”
And Rae gave her a gift then, fragile; words that wrapped themselves around something deeply carved into her ribs, and somehow Carmen was able to breathe again.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
The book in front of Ollie’s eyes was blurring, the words swirling together and swarming into nothingness. Her pen tapped rhythmically on the page, a beat she didn’t recognize but that wouldn’t leave her mind. This paper was due in a few days, a report on a war from years ago that her country still celebrated with vigor. As if battles and death and destruction were worth glorifying rather than avoiding at all costs.
It was a night for ruminating, for settling among her thoughts like sinking into quicksand—every time she struggled to leave them, she became further entangled.
Sara was breathing deeply behind her, wrapped in the sheets of Ollie’s queen bed like she had been doing since their first sleepover. She was an utter blanket hog. Dinner had been quiet. Ollie and Sara had sat down with her mother and father. The food had been hot on her plate, and Sara had talked too much in order to distract them from the mood that had taken over Ollie since Deon’s house.
Ollie’s family wasn’t rolling in money, not by a long shot. Her mother volunteered too much of her time with organizations that sent surgeons to faraway places or to clinics down the road to help those who had nothing. Her father was an architect who worked extra hard to make sure her mother could give time to these causes. But they were more than comfortable. Ollie had no idea what hunger really meant, had at least one parent with her every night in the house. In fact, their concern pressed in so much that sometimes Ollie wanted to crawl out of her skin to find some space to breathe. But what was that compared to what she’d seen of Carmen’s life? That quick glimpse Ollie had had of foster homes and feeling lost, of losing a parent and having no one else?
But Carmen had the government looking out for her now. From the looks of it, she was going to a girls’ home, would be in school.
She’d be fine.
But she wouldn’t be with Ollie.
So why wouldn’t the memory of her leave Ollie alone? Why did it feel like Carmen had imprinted herself over Ollie’s skin, invisible to everyone else but pulling at everything that was Ollie?
Outside the rain was falling so hard it echoed throughout the house, the splattering over the glass matching the rhythm of Ollie’s tapping pen. Though it wasn’t that cold, the weather was starting to turn. It’d be a hard winter.
She stood and stared out the window, unable to see much of the backyard beyond the rain falling in sheets. The shrub near the window spilled drops of it, water running down its bark, dark and brown. The color made Ollie bite down the memory of Carmen’s eyes, staring at her in an alcohol haze, as they were tucked into a bathroom. She had stared at Ollie with something so desperate under dirty bleachers that Ollie had wanted to tear herself open, to spill everything she was, to offer it all to Carmen, just on the small chance it was what she wanted.
With a flick of her wrist, she yanked the curtain across the window and went to bed.
Chapter 10
For a moment when Carmen woke, something in her chest expanded and she thought she was home. Not home, at her mother’s, but home, the feeling that was meant to go with the word, that feeling that slid along your insides to nestle in and beat alongside your heart.
She knew the sounds that echoed outside the room, the voices that murmured, the thuds that meant someone was walking up or down the stairs. Soft breaths echoed in the room, and Mattie mumbled in his sleep, rubbing his face into their shared pillow, his hair buffed into a cloud that they needed to do something with.
When he finally grumbled awake, blinking and stretching, he sat up suddenly, looking wildly around the room.
“Hey.” Carmen’s voice was thick with sleep, low and gravelly.
Mattie’s eyes found hers as he twisted to look at her. “I wasn’t cold.”
The fact he was surprised to wake up and be warm made Carmen swallow and force a smile. “Good. You hungry?”
“Yup.” His look darkened just slightly, eyebrows bunching together. “We don’t have to have peanut butter, do we?”
Carmen poked him in the ribs, wriggling her fingers to make him squirm away, his face lighting up for a moment with a grin that warmed her. “Nope, doubtful. You said you saw cereal.”
At the end of the bed, as far from her tickling as he could be, Mattie asked, “But what about milk? I didn’t see a fridge.”
Carmen lifted her foot and poked him in the ribs again with her socked toe, smirking when he thudded slightly off the mattress with a squawk, his lips curving upward. “They have magic milk.”
Cross-legged on the floor, he eyed her. “Magic milk?”
“Yup.” Carmen sat up, reorganizing her hair. It would be so much easier to manage short. Her waves of hair were nothing like her mother’s straight locks. Once, when Carmen was small, she’d asked her mother if her hair had been from her father. Her mother had said something about her father’s family, from El Salvador, and had left Carmen with more questions than answers.
“You’re tricking me.”
Carmen blinked, pulled back to a world with magic milk, and put on her hoodie. “Yup.”
She smirked, and he returned it, rolling his eyes for good measure.
They walked out, Mattie close to her side. She dropped an arm over his shoulders as they walked down the stairs, their feet in time with each other.
“No, but seriously,” he asked, “what about milk?”
Some teens she didn’t know lolled on the sofas, and when they wandered to the makeshift kitchen, mismatched and organized and loved, Carmen’s breath stilled in her chest. “Dex?”
Somehow, he looked bigger and softer all at the same time.
“Carmen.”
He had no rise in his tone, just a sense of expectation. Clearly, someone had already told him she was here, and he grinned, his eyes vibrantly green. He walked up to her, and for a moment he hesitated, as he no doubt remembered the girl who shied away from hugs, remembered h
er backstepping, her darting eyes. But then he stepped forward, his giant arms enveloping her.
Carmen stiffened, her spine rigid. But in spite of herself, she relaxed into it. His hand, coarse and gruff yet somehow so gentle, cupped the back of her head for just a moment. Her throat tightened, prickling.
He stepped away to let her have her space. “It’s damn good to see you.”
She bit her lip, felt herself fight the urge, but then smiled anyway. “You too.”
“You look all grown-up.”
Her shoulders pulled up in a shrug, and Mattie moved closer until he was against her back.
“Not really.”
A look flashed in his eyes that Carmen couldn’t place. Extra lines creased around his eyes. His hair and beard were streaked with gray.
“Good.” His looked down and dropped to a knee, looking Mattie straight in his cautious eyes. “Hey—I hear you’re Mattie.”
Mattie stared at him for a moment, then looked up at Carmen. “Why does everyone know me?”
Dex chuckled, warm and rich like butterscotch, and Carmen remembered how he would sink into one of the sofas with her and Rae, his voice a rumble as he shared stories and Rae accused him of exaggeration. “I’m magic.”
Mattie gave him the same look he’d given Carmen minutes before, a look of very preteen as if. “Jia told you.”
The laugh that burst from Dex was a surprised boom. “She did. I’m Dex. It’s great to meet you. You hungry?” Dex was still kneeling. When Mattie nodded enthusiastically, Dex asked, “What for?”
Mattie glanced at Carmen, unsure, before looking back to Dex. “I think I saw cereal?”
“You did. Want some?”
“Yeah.” Mattie’s eyebrows knitted together. “But what about milk?”
“Important question.” Dex stood. “Come on—let me show you some real magic.”
When Carmen didn’t say not to, Mattie followed Dex over to a pallet bench, his eyes curious as Dex pulled out a can of powdered milk from one of the crates and held it out.
Mattie looked from Dex to the can and back again. “That’s not magic or milk.”
Dex chuckled, and Carmen crossed her arms, letting Mattie have his moment of cheek.
“Well, Mattie who seems to know everything,” Dex said, “watch and learn.” Without even looking up, he added, “Carmen, Jia wanted to speak to you when you had a moment.”
“Okay.” Mattie was glued to Dex’s side, watching him spoon powder into a small bottle of water. “You okay here, Mattie?”
He glanced up. “Where are you going?”
At the jarring edge in his voice, Carmen’s feet took her a step toward him before she could stop them. “Just to Jia’s office.”
With a lip caught between his teeth, Mattie looked from Carmen to Dex.
“You can come,” Carmen offered.
“Or,” Dex said, “you can make the magic happen.”
He held out the bottle and the cap, and Mattie’s lips quirked up a little. He reached for it, but paused to look back at Carmen once before taking the bottle. “I’m okay here.”
With one last glance back at her brother, Carmen crossed the warehouse floor, nodding at the two guys she passed who were sprawled on a sofa. They gave lazy waves back, one with an iPod in his ears and the other with a book.
The door was open, and Carmen stood in the doorway, her hand hovering to knock, but Jia turned to face her from her desk before it was necessary. “Carmen.”
“Hi.”
Her arms felt too long, so she buried her hands into the center pocket of her hoodie, knotting them together. With no reason to do so, her heart pounded, a drum in her ears.
“Come in.”
She did, and took a seat in a spare chair, then pulled a leg up under her.
“Sleep well?” Jia asked.
“I did. You?”
“Yes. We’ve done a lot of work on the building. It’s much warmer than it once was.”
Carmen glanced around the room and partly out the door before turning back to Jia. “It’s looking really good.”
For a beat, they eyed each other. Jia had originally hesitated when Carmen had first turned up here with her bruised face and bleeding lip; her scrawniness, her age, the anger in her, and the way she never spoke on her own accord had all been points piling up against her.
“Your brother is young.”
“He is. So was I.”
“Not that young.” Jia sat back in her chair. “He could be in a school, in a home. At his age, the placement is faster, easier.”
A muscle in Carmen’s jaw ticked, and she measured her words before she spoke. “It doesn’t mean it would be a good one. Or a permanent one. He could be moved constantly—probably would have been.” Carmen hesitated over the next words. “Plus, I really think he would have run away this time.” She sighed. “I know he would have.”
Jia didn’t bother arguing. She knew that better than most. She saw it constantly. “There’s really no family? Nothing?”
Carmen swallowed, too heavily, the pull at her throat unsettling her. “No one.”
Carmen’s mother said she didn’t know who Mattie’s father was: he was an unanswered question in Mattie’s life that would stay that way.
“I’m sorry about your mother.”
That prickling in her eyes was back, and Carmen had to look up at the ceiling again and blink rapidly before she could answer. “Thank you.”
“So.” Jia just watched her as she spoke, gauging her in a familiar way. Carmen had never known anyone to read people the way she did. The way she would size people up and make a decision. And that initial decision was one that never changed. “What’s your plan?”
Carmen blinked again. Cleared her throat. The silence and the expectation of an answer were suffocating.
“No plan?”
The lack of surprise in Jia’s voice bothered Carmen but shouldn’t have, really.
“I want to be his legal guardian when I can.”
Jia’s eyes, black and knowing and filled with too much wisdom, stayed on her intently. “How do you think, when you apply, that will play out, when they find out you’ve had him on the streets with you, out of school, for almost two years?”
“I…” Carmen dropped her foot to the floor and looked at Jia, her elbows on her knees. The plan that had been itching at the back of her mind for days now pressed at her for a place to expand. “I had one idea…”
“Tell me.”
“Mattie,” she explained, “could lie. He could say he ran, and I’ll agree, and, maybe, possibly, someone else could testify to that fact. We could pretend I’d never found him on the street. I’ll petition for guardianship.”
“You think they’d believe that?” Jia’s expression made it clear she didn’t.
“I—I don’t know.”
“I don’t think they’d buy it. That he was alone for two years and you magically find each other?”
Someone pushing back at the only vague idea she had was not making Carmen feel any more confident. “Maybe—maybe he could just get found alone, or go to a police station? With no attachment to me?”
Jia’s eyes just watched her, dark.
“I could go to social services a little while later and ask about him? Say I didn’t bother earlier because I knew I couldn’t have him until I was legally an adult?”
Sighing, Jia swiped her hand over her jeans. “Maybe. I think that trying to get legal custody isn’t going to be easy, Carmen. Especially now you’re both out here.”
Did people think she didn’t get that? “I know.”
“I’ll say this once.” Jia looked her straight in the eye. “It’s not too late to get him back into foster care. It would make it easier for you late
r.”
“No.”
And Jia must have seen the way she straightened, the fire Carmen could feel burning in her eyes, because she raised her eyebrows. Finally, she sat back in her chair. “Okay. That’s what I expected, anyway.”
As she should. Carmen just couldn’t do that. Not now. Mattie would never forgive her. She’d never forgive herself.
“Look,” Jia said. “It could work. It’s not the best plan, but it could work. But why would they give him to you? An eighteen-year-old who dropped out of school to live on the streets at sixteen? One with a record?”
“A record that will disappear when I turn eighteen.”
“And the other idea?”
“I’ll find a job. I’ll work legitimately. I’ll get us an apartment eventually.”
One day, Carmen would take courses and get her high school diploma. She’d liked school. She was good at it. The year she’d spent out of it last time had been long, and missing it had surprised her.
Jia sucked in a breath. “We need to figure out a better plan, Carmen. It could work, maybe. But it also may very well not. We can help you with some of it… But what about the next year and, what—several months? With the system, at least two years before anything was finalized? What about Mattie?”
And there, that was where Carmen stuttered and stalled. He was safe with her. This place, it was safe. But he was eight and living in a crack in the system. “I don’t know.”
And she really, really didn’t. She had no idea what to do with Mattie.
“We can think about it. There are options.” Jia’s voice right now was so much like Dex’s. Carmen had heard it before, tight with anger, had heard her bark orders at people and watched them jump into line. But at times like this, it was flush with reassurance and hope.