by Apryl Baker
What I did was a gut reaction. Hit first and ask questions later. It’s a rule I learned to live by when I got dumped into the foster care system. I spent years going from one foster home to another, watching my back every second of every day. Years and years of seeing kids that have been traumatized by their parents, left homeless because of deaths, and just plain messed up for no good reason.
I’m sure there are good places out there, places where people honestly care about the kids they are supposed to be looking after, but I hadn’t found one yet. The ones I ended up with only cared about the checks that came from taking us in. My first set of foster parents kept the fridge and the pantry door padlocked to make sure we only ate when we were supposed to. We got a bath twice a week so that we wouldn’t run up the water bill. We did get fed. Grits every morning, a piece of bread and water for lunch, and then dinner was beans and cornbread. We got fed just the minimal to keep us alive. Real nice folks.
The Olsons aren’t so bad though. They are by far the best foster parents I’ve been placed with. They aren’t nosy, they feed me, and they make sure I have the stuff I need: a hot bath, clean clothes, and a warm place to sleep every night. I know it doesn’t sound like much to most people, but to me, it’s the best thing since I discovered Dove chocolate. They don’t pester me about where I’m going and they leave me alone for the most part. They get their check and I get a decent roof over my head. The other foster kids that live here, six in total, feel the same. It’s not a bad place. Doesn’t mean it’s great either. It has its ups and downs. They can be a little odd sometimes. One minute they are nice as pie and the next, they can scream at you for not moving fast enough. Just weird.
“Mattie?” Dan prompts when I don’t answer right away.
“I really don’t want to discuss it,” I tell him.
“That’s not a normal reaction, Mattie,” he says patiently.
No, I guess a normal person wouldn’t react like that, but I’m not normal. I’m a kid that grew up in the system, fighting off one thing or another, including the men I call Mr. Feely Hands. I was six the first time I came across one of them. I was on my third foster home. He came into my room about an hour after all the kids went to bed. There were eight of us and I was the only one who had my own room. I didn’t know what it meant at that age, but I learned fast.
I was almost asleep when I heard the door open and then he shuffled over to my bed. Before I could ask what he was doing, he clamped his big beefy hand over my nose and mouth. I can still remember the stench of the liquor on him. He was all sweaty and his brown eyes were bright. They reminded me of a rat’s eyes, small and shiny. He told me to be quiet if I didn’t want to get hurt.
Even at the tender age of six, I wasn’t stupid. My mom had some pretty seedy boyfriends and she’d told me exactly what I was supposed to do if any of them ever scared me. Scream my head off. If I couldn’t scream then I was supposed to fight, bite, scratch and kick until I could scream. That’s exactly what I did. He went away bloody and I was hustled off to the ER. That was the only good thing my Mom ever did for me. She taught me to fight.
“Just drop it, Dan, okay?” I sound tired. Feel tired. I don’t want to have a heartfelt talk about my past.
He nods and changes the subject. “So, I checked out your story about your friend Mary…”
“OHMYGOD MARY!” I shoot straight up, how can I have forgotten Mary? The whole being fondled incident, duh. “She’s alive.”
“What?” Officer Dan frowns at me. “How do you know that? I thought you only saw ghosts?”
“I don’t know, but she is alive. I think. You said you did some digging?”
“Yeah. I found a girl named Mary Cross that went missing about a week ago in Meyer’s Park. Her mother said she woke up and Mary was gone. Her bike was missing too.”
“Was her boyfriend’s name, Jimmie?”
“James Mason,” he says.
“Still think I’m making it up?”
“I don’t know what to believe. It’s… slightly insane.”
“She’s alive. You have to help me find her.”
He gives me one of those deep, probing looks I’ve only ever read about. It’s the kind of look that goes straight through you, like he’s trying to see my soul or some such nonsense, but instead of making me nervous, it makes me more resolved than ever. I need him even if he’s a jerk and he doesn’t believe me. He has access to things I don’t. Rookie he might be, but he can use the police resources available to him and not me.
“Can I ask you a question, Mattie?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you throw such a fit over finding Sally? From what Mrs. Olson said the two of you weren’t even that close. You barely knew her, but you’re talking to ghosts for her?”
“I’m not sure you’d understand, Dan. You grew up in a good home with parents that love you, right?”
He nods.
“We didn’t. Mostly the foster parents are just about the check they get every month. We’re a means to an end for them. The only people we have to rely on are each other. If we don’t take care of each other, then no one else will. Sally and I weren’t that close, but we kind-of are too.”
I take off my shoe and hand it to him. “See the marks there, on the bottom? Each one represents a home we’ve been in. All of us do it, it’s an old tradition. It binds us together, something we can share and always relate to. Sally had five marks. Each of the homes she’d been in had been pretty horrible, until this one. The Olsons aren’t bad and actually seem to take an interest, care even. Sally liked it here. I didn’t want anyone thinking that she was just another statistic, another runaway. She’s more than that. She’s family. I don’t know if you can understand that or not, Dan.”
“More than you know, Mattie. My older brother Cameron and I are adopted. Mom and Dad found him in a home for boys when he was ten. They adopted me a few years later. I grew up knowing I was adopted and it doesn’t bother me. Cam, though, he didn’t grow up with loving parents all his life. So, I do understand a little what you’re going through. He doesn’t talk much about his life before he came to live with us, but sometimes he gets this look on his face when he watches something on TV or just sees something that sparks a memory. He has a family of his own now. He’s happy, but he remembers. I think it was hard on him back then and it’s not something he can shake.”
How about that? “I don’t know if you can ever shake it off,” I tell him softly. “Growing up knowing no one loves you or even cares about you is one of the hardest things you can ever imagine.”
“I’m sorry, Mattie.”
“No worries, Officer Dan. I’m fine. Now, back to Sally. She deserves some justice. Plus, I think she was murdered by a serial killer.”
“Serial killer?”
He sounds skeptical. I can’t blame him. So I tell him about everything that has happened, starting with the kid in the bathroom and ending with Mary’s last episode.
“A ghost put you in the hospital?”
“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just as shocked as you. How was I supposed to know they could hurt me?”
“Because you’re the ghost girl?”
I snort. “Right. You’re talking to the girl who’s spent the last ten years pretending they don’t exist. I know zilch about ghosts except they are creepy little buggers that have a nasty habit of scaring the bejeezus out of you when you least expect it.”
“You’re weird.”
“Thank you.” I give him my best cheeky grin. “It would be so totally boring to be normal.”
Dan smiles and I realize what a nice smile he has. He’s really cute when he grins like that. How did I not see this before? Because I was irritated, that’s why. I stare a little harder, but I get no butterflies like I do when I’m with Jake. Huh. Maybe Jake’s making more of an impression on my heart than I thought. I can’t even appreciate Officer Dan’s nice smile. Dang it.
“So what do you think?” I ask him. “Could they hav
e all been killed by the same person?”
“It’s unlikely, Mattie, but the same wound could be a pattern. I wish we had something more to go on.”
“How about pictures?”
“Pictures?” He frowns at me.
“While you were trying to figure out if I was insane or not, I at least, was productive.” I jump up and grab my bag I’d put down beside the door when I came home. I hand Dan my sketchbook. “Will these work?”
Dan leafs through the images. I drew them exactly as I’d seen them, bullet wounds, smashed faces, and even Mirror Boy held a place in my book. I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget anything so I drew them all.
“These are…”
“Weird?” I laugh self-consciously. I don’t normally show my work to anyone.
“Brilliant. You have a real gift, Mattie. I might be able to find some of these kids if they were reported missing based on these. They’re amazing.”
Warmth and pride floods me. He likes them. They are creepy and scary as all get out, but he likes them! I let out a little breath I don’t realize I’m holding, and then I frown. Why should I care what he thinks of my stuff anyway? I already admitted I don’t like him that way, so why should it matter to me? Dan is like a riddle that has me going round and round in circles. He makes me madder than I’ve ever been, but yet what he thinks of me is important. I don’t understand it.
“So you believe me?” I ask softly.
He looks me right in the eyes and those brown ones of his are full of comfort. Not sympathy or regret, or even hesitation. His eyes make me think of home. I feel at home with him. I’ve never felt that before, not even when my mom was still alive. She loved me, but never made me feel the warmth and comfort of a real home, but Officer Dan can.
“Mattie. I don’t believe in any of that, but I’m willing to take a chance, to believe in you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really, but no one at the station is going to believe any of this, so I’m going to have to do most of the work by myself when I can. They have me doing a lot of stuff to get me up to speed. You learn a lot in the academy, but you don’t really learn the real stuff until you get out there on the streets, and learn to apply the lessons. It’s been a busy couple days or I would have called sooner.”
“You were trippin’, Officer Dan. Admit it.”
He sighs. “Yeah, I was trippin’. It’s not every day someone tells me they can see ghosts.”
“It’s not every day I tell someone I can see ghosts,” I whisper. “You’re the first person I trusted enough to tell.”
“I’m glad you trust me.”
“But I don’t know why I do, trust you I mean. I never wanted to tell you, it just sorta slipped out, well blurted out.”
He gives me another one of those soul searching stares and I fidget. He starts to say something, but then Mrs. Olson opens the door and pops her head in.
“Lunch is ready.” She tells us then sees my sketchpad in Dan’s hands. “What’s that?”
“Mattie was showing me some of her work,” Dan says. “She’s really good. I’m going to show them to a few people who might be very interested in them.”
“Well, now, that is wonderful,” Mrs. Olson says, beaming at Dan. I think she has a crush on him the way she’s grinning. I almost giggle, but manage to hold it back. “Did you say thank you, Mattie?”
“Thank you, Officer Dan.”
“Mattie Louise!” Mrs. Olson looks mortified at my sarcastic response.
“What?” I ask innocently. “I said thank you.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Olson,” Dan tells her. “I need to get back to the station and check on a few things. If we hear anything new on Sally, we’ll call.”
Twenty minutes and two ham sandwiches later, I’m putting my plate in the dishwasher when I hear one of the upstairs doors slam then, “MATTIE LOUISE!”
Uh-oh, what did I do now? I leave the kitchen to find Mrs. Olson stomping down the stairs.
“Why is this house so filthy?” she asks me.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I just got home from the hospital, Mrs. O.”
“Is that any excuse for a dirty house?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Get it clean, NOW!”
Sighing, I head to the laundry room where the mop and broom are. I swear that woman is bipolar, she runs so hot and cold, but at least it’s a decent place here. I can put up with her crazy mood swings for that.
I glare at the broom. Man, I hate cleaning other people’s messes. I hope Dan is having better luck than me.
Chapter Ten
“You okay, Matts? You seem distracted.”
I smile at the worry in Jake’s voice. Ever since the hospital, he’s been treating me like I’m his most prized baseball card and that’s saying something. Jake and his dad are huge baseball guys. To say anything against the American pastime is like sacrilege or something to them.
Distracted. I chuckle. If he only knew. My mind has been spinning for the last two days trying to find clues in everything that has happened. I’m not the kind of person that can just sit and wait for someone else to do all the work. I’d given Dan my drawings, but I have this need to be out there looking too. I’d joked with Dan maybe I’d be a cop and he’d told me that wasn’t a bad idea. I had good instincts and thought of things even he didn’t. So why am I sitting here in a diner sipping on Coke instead of looking for Mary?
Jake Owens.
I have this urge to tell him what’s going on, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose him. Jake means the world to me. He puts up with my snarkiness and I’m not sure why. He’s such a good guy, sweet, never a mean word about anyone. I can get so mean sometimes. That why I can’t figure out what he sees in me, really. He should be dating Amanda, the shy girl from math class. She’s just as sweet as he is. I’m the freak with a warped and twisted sense of morality.
“Jake, why do you like me?” It’s a question I’ve never asked him, but one I’ve thought of asking him a hundred times.
“That’s easy, Matts,” he laughs. “You’re hot.”
I laugh as well at the teasing tone in his voice, but I really want to know. “Seriously, Jake, why me and not someone else?”
He picks up my hand and his thumb starts rubbing slow circles into the back of of it. “Mattie, you are not like any other girl I know. All my other girlfriends were boring. All they ever wanted to talk about was what was happening on Gossip Girl or who Kim Kardashian was dating. Like I even know who that is? You’re different. You don’t care that I’m captain of the team, you see me.”
“I don’t get it, though. I’m not your type.”
“My type? What makes you say that?”
“You’re just so… so… so nice! I’m not. I’m snarky, sarcastic, and downright mean. Some of the stuff that comes out of my mouth…”
He starts laughing. I glare at him. Here I’m trying to have a serious conversation and he’s laughing at me.
“Sorry, Mattie, but I couldn’t help it. You sound so confused. Yeah, you’re pretty mean sometimes, but I don’t think you’re totally serious about it, not really. The girl I know cares about people, but she hides behind all that snarkiness. Besides, it’s cute. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone brave enough to stand up and call Mr. Clayborne a…how did you put it?”
He’s referring to our history teacher. Mr. Clayborne was a college football star with a busted knee. It kept him from going pro. During my first week here, he spent all his time reminiscing about the good old days and boring the class to tears. I’d called him a sad, pathetic, washed-up wannabe who whined instead of moving on. Not my best idea as it landed me in detention for the first week of school, but so worth it.
“That’s my point, Jake. You don’t seem like the kind of guy who’d put up with that from his girlfriend. Why you haven’t dumped me and my mouth yet, I don’t know.”
He slips an arm around me. “Mattie, you’ve just had really bad things happen to
you. I get that. I know that’s why you act like an ass sometimes, but I also see the person you hide. You are a good person so deal with it. Besides, feel lucky you are dating the hottest guy in school who just happens to be a football god.”
“Now who sounds conceited?” I laugh. Jake is one of the few guys I’ve ever met who has no issues talking about their feelings. Most guys consider it too girly, but that just makes Jake all the more special.
He leans over and kisses me and I forget about everything for just a few minutes. He has that effect on me. He can make me forget myself when he kisses me. I let myself get lost in the emotions, in the butterflies in my stomach and the sensations he evokes. Jake is such a good kisser.
“Get a room you two,” says a familiar voice. Geeze, Tommy, can’t come up with anything more original? So lame.
I reluctantly pull away when Tommy, Meg alongside him, slide into the booth. Meg is grinning like an idiot at me. She knows I’ve been thinking about Jake and sex. We had that conversation the day of the party. Meg’s all for me devirginizing myself. Is that even a word? It should be. I haven’t really given anymore thought to it with everything else that’s been going on, but seeing Meg grin like that makes me remember and start to think about it again.
Sex is not something I’ve given much thought to outside of making sure I didn’t get molested or raped in the foster homes. It gives me hives just thinking about it, honestly. Maybe it’s because I associate it with the bad things that happen in some of the homes. After you hear the horror stories from so many kids, it gets to be something dirty and awful. I KNOW that my idea of sex is warped, but it comes from the environment I grew up in. I’m not sure I can do it without panicking. Look at my episode with Stevie the other day. I know he didn’t want to do anything. But so help me, I can’t get past the feel of his hands and what it might mean. I’m so messed up.
Crap. Tommy is staring at my chest again. He is such a slime ball. I cross arms over my girls. I have decent cleavage – one good thing inherited from my mom. She’d been gorgeous with a rack most of the girls in my school would sell an appendage for. I’d inherited some of that, but not her model-tall figure. I’m not short, but I’m not tall either. Stuck somewhere in the middle.