by Jake Burt
Grammy always told me that no matter what I stole, my hands were the real treasure. I guess I must have taken that to heart. My therapist tells me it’s part of my “issues.” Yep. A little anxiety to go along with my uncontrollable urge to swipe things. Another gift I should probably thank my dad for.
“I can’t even wear gloves,” I explain. “Just the feel of them, all itchy and squeezy around my fingers, freaks me out. So yeah, nobody touches my hands.”
Eddie nods solemnly. “That’s my bad. It’s clear you’ve been through a lot. But this is tough, see, and we wouldn’t be asking if we didn’t think you could do good here, that you could help.”
He stands up, leaning his backside on the edge of the table. Man, can he loom. He looms like nobody’s business.
“Part of this, Nicki, is that you need to sign your records over to us. Ms. Wainwright told us she wouldn’t do it without your approval—and good on her for saying so. Kid, you should’ve seen the hoops she made us jump through just to get this far. We had to have our director Skype with her from his office, forms signed in triplicate, multiple IDs.… The lady does right by you, let me tell you.”
I cast a glance up at the camera, giving it a little nod. Eddie continues.
“This is a big decision, because once your records are the property of the U.S. marshals, we’re going to destroy them. Nicki Demere will no longer exist. If your father…”
I wince. Eddie sighs sympathetically, but goes on.
“If your father or mother come around looking to reconnect, they won’t find a trace of you. If some long-lost uncle researches his family tree, he’ll find no evidence that you were ever here. All your records destroyed. You’ll be issued a new birth certificate, new social security number, new identity, and Nicki Demere will be erased from the government’s memory. It’s a big commitment, but…”
I think I already know the “but.” Yeah, I have fostering papers and school reports, but there’s another kind of record that I wouldn’t mind obliterating.
“Does this also mean my juvie record will be…” I start, sitting up and meeting Eddie’s gaze.
“Yes. You’ll be forgiven. No evidence will be kept of any trouble you’ve been in, and as a result of your cooperation any sentence you may have received will be considered served in full.”
“Let me get this straight. No community service. No prior record. No court-mandated therapy sessions. No nothing?”
“No nothing, Nicki. A fresh start.”
“And … and these people will take care of me? Like an actual daughter?”
“Their safety depends on it. Anything out of the ordinary might draw attention and put them at risk. In fact, that’s your number one priority—making sure everything stays normal. Nothing to draw notoriety, or shine any sort of spotlight on the family. Remember you said you’ve never been caught stealing? It’s your ability to lay low, to assimilate into new families and schools quickly, that makes you ideal for this most important task. Other foster kids—”
“Kids in foster care,” I correct.
“Sure, Nicki … anyway, they don’t all adapt like you. They haven’t done as well in schools, have acted out, have had problems that make them unfit for what we’re doing. You’re strong, though. You’ve made it through.”
I almost laugh. Oh yeah, I’ve adapted just swimmingly. Have they seen my rap sheet? And I’ve “made it through”? All those nights I spent latched on to Fancypaws, unable to sleep, crying quietly so I wouldn’t be a weepy burden on whoever I was with and get sent away again? Yep. I’ve been making it through just fine.
I give Eddie an archy eyebrow.
“But let me guess—I do this, I don’t get to see anyone here ever again. I don’t get to say good-bye, or tell them where I’m going. I just … disappear.”
He nods. “We’d leave immediately. You and Janice would collect a few of your things and pack them right away. Our training center is in Georgia, and we’d fly there this afternoon. You’ll be taught the protocols—how to act, what to look for, how to lay low. You’ll also learn more about the Sicurezza family and your new home.”
I run a hand through my hair, pulling it over my face like a blanket on a birdcage. Hiding behind that veil, I’m able to think more clearly.
“What’s she doing?” Eddie asks Janice after a few minutes.
“She’s thinking,” Janice replies.
Janice might be the stuffiest lady I’ve met in a while, but she gets this, at least.
Okay, Nicki—pros and cons. Pros: No criminal record. New family. New responsibilities. An amazing secret to keep. Maybe my own Taser. Cons: No more friends at the Center. No more dreams of meeting my dad in a diner and having a slice of Dutch apple pie. No more Nicki, except in my own mind.
Oh, and there’s a criminal organization hunting down my new family.
Twenty minutes ago, when my world seemed sane, this would have been a much harder decision. What if I left with these two, and the next day my dad showed up, fresh out of prison and ready for a new start? But he’s had two years’ worth of days to do that, and he just hasn’t. I run through every possible excuse. The law won’t let him near schools or orphanages? The parole board told him he couldn’t see me? He developed a weird pathological fear of telephones and taxis? No matter what I come up with, though, it’s not good enough. None of that would have stopped me from finding him, so the only excuse I can think of that makes sense is the most painful one.
He just doesn’t want me.
Something tells me it’s probably not a good idea to do this to spite him, to say “Two can play at this never-coming-back game.…” Something’s telling me I’m not in the right mental state to make this decision, and especially not so quickly.
Then again, the vindictive, petty, angry, hurt part of me is saying it’s a fabulous idea, and sometimes you’ve just gotta give that girl her due.
I slowly sweep the hair from my eyes. Eddie offers me what must pass for him as a soft, reassuring smile. Looks more like someone chiseled a horizontal line in a block of well-tanned concrete.
“Nicki, I know this seems out of the blue, and strange; that it’s not normal—”
I raise my hand, cutting him short. I learned three foster families ago that a kid needs to have a flexible definition of normal.
“Where do I sign?”
Janice and Eddie exchange glances. His is triumphant. Hers is more “What did we just do?” Warily, she slides several papers from the file toward me. “Going to need you to sign at all the Xs, Nicki. And make sure your signature is clear.”
Grabbing a pen from the center of the table, I brush my hair behind my ears and get to reading. I think I understand most of it, or would if my head wasn’t swimming. I carefully sign each form, thankful that I’m right-handed. When I’m finished, I swallow once, think a tiny prayer, and toss the pen to Eddie, who fumbles with it for a minute before setting it down.
“All set, Nicki?”
I nod. Janice grabs the papers and hurriedly jams them into a folder. I try to smile but find that my teeth are starting to chatter, to go along with my quivering left hand and bouncing leg.
I’m totally about to freak out again.
I just joined the U.S. marshals.
CHAPTER FOUR
Smelling as Sweet
I’m expecting about an hour to pack up my stuff, to run my hands over the blankets on my bed, to touch the grooves and dips in the ceiling. I get five minutes. No walking the hallways to look at the girls with their big hair. No stop in the art room to tear down a memento. I’m not even allowed out on the playground to say good-bye to Emmy. Basically, as Janice watches, I shove a few things into my suitcase, starting with Fancypaws.
“Do you really need that ratty old thing?”
I don’t answer. Fancypaws is nonnegotiable. Janice fights me on a bunch of other stuff—trinkets and tokens, mostly—and wins. She doesn’t even let me go get my toothbrush: “We have them in Glynco,” she explains.
>
In the end, I leave with two shirts, a skirt, a couple of pairs of underwear and socks, one bra, Fancypaws, and the clothes on my back. Everything else, Janice says, Wainwright will be instructed to incinerate. Now that I’ve signed the papers, Janice is even twitchier than me, as if she has a time bomb ticking in her back pocket. By the end, she’s scooping up handfuls of things from my drawer and dumping them into a brown paper bag.
“Wait,” I say when I see a particular flash of color.
“What now?” She sighs.
I peer down into the bulging bag and spot it immediately. It’s my only picture of my dad and me—I’m six, it’s about a month before Dad got sent upriver, and we’re at the Bronx Zoo. It’s your classic family-on-a-carousel photo—well, sort of. I do look happy, and my dad seems about as amused as you can expect a thirty-year-old guy to be while spinning in a lazy circle for seven minutes straight. He’s got his old U.S. Army sweatshirt on, hood pulled up to hide the pale of his closely shaven head, and he’s glancing down at his flip phone. What sets this picture apart is that the whole carousel is made of bugs. Not horses, or unicorns, or camels. Bugs. I’m riding on an enormous praying mantis, screaming with warrior-woman glee as I chase my father around and around. He’s being unceremoniously rolled along by a hardworking beetle, sitting on a fiberglass bench crafted to resemble a massive ball of dung. Now that I think about it, I suppose it’s a pretty darn good metaphor for my life up to this point. If I couldn’t catch him while astride a wicked-cool mantis steed, how was I ever going to do it with hundreds of stupid letters and wishful thinking?
Besides, now I can see exactly what I’ve been chasing, and it doesn’t amount to much more than that pile of dung.
“No, Nicki. The director has already given us what pictures we need. You’re not permitted to keep—”
I cut Janice off with the sharp sound of ripping photo paper. In fact, I shred the thing, letting the bits of bug and baby girl flutter back down into the bag.
“Just making sure no one can connect me to that particular piece of history,” I declare. Janice nods, and she covers the remnants of the photo with the last of the knickknacks I didn’t have room to pack.
When we’re done, Eddie and Janice lead me past Wainwright’s office. I strain to see through the glass, but the two hands on my shoulders, especially Eddie’s big paw, hustle me down the hall before I can get a proper look. Still, I think I can see Wainwright in there, looking down at the playground, biting her nails. There’s a moment when it seems like she sees me, too, maybe in the reflection in the window, and she pulls her pinkie from her teeth just long enough to crook it in a little wave good-bye.
A wicked New York wind whips around the buildings, shearing past us as we step outside. I bury my hands in the giant pockets of my sweatshirt, glad Janice didn’t rip it off my back. In just a minute or so, we’re in front of a black SUV, which Eddie unlocks with a click of his beeping button before tossing my suitcase in.
When we’re seated, Janice starts the engine and Eddie cranks the heat.
“I’ll be glad to be back in Georgia,” he offers from the passenger seat. Janice grunts in agreement. I’m too busy twisting around to see the Center.
“Seat belt, Nicki,” Eddie says jovially. I can tell he’s trying to be as friendly and upbeat as possible, mostly because that’s what every other adult has done, in every other car, every other time I’ve been taken from the Center. Only this time, I doubt they’ll be driving me back in a few months.
As we pull away, my fingers never leave the handle of my suitcase. I can’t help but think of Emmy, Halla, Chrissy, and the rest. I hope they get a chance, and soon. Maybe not like this one, but a chance.
We drive for some time in silence, and there are enough red lights that I get to mentally say good-bye to the City. I can’t say it’s properly been home for me—nowhere has—but it kept me alive for this long, and I owe it that. Some of my friends at the schools I’ve been to have sworn up and down that they’re City girls. It’s in their blood, they claimed, and it filled their hearts, guided them to love ShackBurgers and hate the Red Sox. I never quite felt that way, and I don’t know why, but I’m having pangs all the same, especially when we exit the tunnel into New Jersey and start seeing signs for Newark International Airport. For someone who signed those papers so quickly, I sure am looking back a lot.
I snap out of my reverie when Eddie suddenly claps his hands. “Say, Nicki—have you given any thought to your new name?”
“My new name?” I ask. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need to change it, though I suppose it should have. I spot the ND on my suitcase, and my hand slips over it.
“Sure! The Sicurezzas obviously won’t be the Sicurezzas anymore. They’re going to be the Trevors. Trevor—that’s your new last name.”
“But I get to pick my first name?”
“And middle, if you like.”
Oh, so much potential here. I mean, I love my name. It connects me to my grammy, and it’s all I’ve ever known. Then again, it also connects me to my dad.… And getting to pick a new one? After all the drama of the last hour? It’s like eating those nasty little Valentine’s Day hearts with the words on them for a week, suddenly to be offered a box of Swiss chocolate. I momentarily forget my nerves, my emptiness. I get to pick my name!
“Elegancia Florence Trevor.”
Janice coughs loudly, and the SUV swerves a little before she recovers. Eddie laughs out loud.
“Sorry, kid. It can’t be anything strange. You’ve got to blend in. Remember—normal is the key. Everything from here out has to be normal.”
“So Titanium Ravenlocks is out, too?”
“That’s a safe bet.”
“No Baroness Quicksilver?”
“Nope.”
“Smoothness von Fruffelburg?”
More choking sounds from Janice. I grab a piece of hair and chew. This is going to be harder than I thought.
“What about Anne?” Janice murmurs.
“You’re kidding, right?” I say.
“What’s wrong with Anne? It’s a perfectly fine name.”
“Yeah, if you’re going to be tromping around Avonlea.”
“What? Where’s Avonlea?” Eddie asks.
I smile. “Oh, shelved somewhere after Frank and Raggedy, I imagine.”
That one just gets silence.
“Anne Frank? Raggedy Ann? Man, I should’ve slipped a library card into your wallet before I gave it back, Eddie.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Lots of time to read at the Center. I like books,” I explain. “And besides, I’d like to avoid names that don’t bode well for kids my age. Anne’s one. So is Joan. Or Juliet. Did you know she was only thirteen when she borrowed Romeo’s happy dagger? I need a name that gives me a fighting chance to make it to high school someday.”
“Hey!” Eddie bubbles enthusiastically. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a two-hundred-pound man do jazz hands. “I get it now!”
I smile, then get back to thinking. “How’s about Trevor? Like, Trevor Trevor?”
I swear, the way she’s gripping the steering wheel and muttering, Janice is just going to pull the car over right here, like some angry minivan-mom with a load of fourth graders in the backseat.
“I’m kidding, of course.”
Doesn’t matter. She’s still white-knuckling it. My own digits get to drumming on the plastic seam of my suitcase as I think, long fingers skittering across like the legs of some quickly crawling …
“Charlotte?” I blurt.
“Charlotte,” Eddie pronounces slowly. “Charlotte Trevor. Hey, kid, yeah! I like it!”
Actually, I kind of do, too. It’s no Titanium, but it shares a bunch of letters with my actual first name—Nicolette—without sounding like it. I can still end my signature with the flourish through the double t’s, and I’ve never known a Charlotte before, so I don’t have any other kid’s face in my head when I think about it. My brain isn’t
conjuring up any unfortunate famous Charlottes, either—just the spider, a Brontë sister, and a Doyle. This could work.
“How’s that, Janice?” I say, leaning forward and watching her eyes in the rearview.
“It will do for now,” she replies, not even glancing back.
“No famous tragic Charlottes, huh?” Eddie inquires, chuckling.
“Nope. At least, none that didn’t live full lives and have hundreds of babies first.”
Eddie’s face scrunches up as he thinks about that one.
We spend the rest of the drive in silence—well, okay, they do. I’m back here quietly having conversations with myself. “Hello, Charlotte Trevor! I’m Charlotte Trevor. Can I introduce you to Charlotte Trevor? Really? Your name is Charlotte Trevor, too? What a coincidence!” Every time I say it, it rolls off my tongue a little easier. Soon I’m trying different accents—“Charl’a Trevvah, guv’nah, iffn’ yah please,” and “Oui, I em ze one called Charleaux Trev’veh.” It’s only when I get to my spot-on Brooklyn accent that Eddie turns around and shakes his head, and I shut up … for about five minutes. Then, without even realizing it, I’m singing the Beatles’s “Yesterday,” only I’m replacing all the words with “Charlotte Trevor.” After that it’s Billy Joel, Taylor Swift, and half of the first act of Wicked. By the time we get to the airport, I’m feeling pretty comfortable with my new name. I still have to pick a middle—something with an A, I’m thinking, for “CAT,” but I’m saving that thought-thread for the flight.
When we get to the airport, Eddie grabs my suitcase. I notice we’re going past everyone else—they all seem to be standing in lines at counters. Sure, I’ve seen airports in movies and on TV, but this is my first time actually being in one, and Janice has to snip at me to keep up since I stop to stare so frequently. After the marshals flash their badges and check their Tasers at a security station, we’re through. On the other side, there’s a massive board of arriving and departing flights, and I’m mesmerized.
“Nicki, please keep moving.”
“It’s Charlotte, if you please,” I murmur, still looking at the board.