“It could come to that one day,” Alan said with a grim look. He had always worried that she would eventually lose her mind over the death of her son and husband. But Becky was right, they couldn’t do anything about it.
And in New York, Blue was just as worried. “Who was that?”
“My sister in California,” Ginny said as she took his clothes from him to put in the washing machine in the basement. “I used to live in L.A.,” she explained, as he stared at her unhappily.
“You’re leaving again soon?” he asked with a sorrowful look. He had heard what she had said to Becky. He had just met her, and now he was about to lose her, too.
“Not for a while,” she said calmly. She could see fear of abandonment on his face and in the deep blue eyes. His hair was clean, and he looked immaculate in her pajamas, as they sat down on the couch. “I might go sometime in January, but I don’t know yet. But then I’ll come back. I always do.” She smiled at him.
“What if you get killed?” She was about to say “no one will miss me,” but she could see in his face that he would, although they hardly knew each other. He looked panicked at the thought of her leaving.
“I won’t get killed. I’ve been doing this for two and a half years. I’m good at it. And I’ll be careful. Don’t worry. Now let’s talk about what we’re going to do today. We both hate Christmas, so let’s do something that has nothing to do with the holiday. What do you like to do? Go to movies? Go bowling? Do you ice-skate?”
He shook his head in answer, still worried. “I used to bowl with my aunt Charlene, before…before she got too busy.”
Ginny could tell that there was something he wasn’t telling her, but she didn’t want to pry. “Want to try it?”
“Okay,” he said, smiling slowly.
“And then we can go to the movies, and have dinner.” It sounded like a slice of heaven to him. She wanted him to have a good time while he was with her. She had no idea what would happen after that. All they had to do was get through the day, and make it a decent Christmas for both of them. She had been planning to stay in bed and read and finish her report, but that wasn’t in the cards now. She could do it later.
After she took them to the machines in the basement, Blue’s clothes were clean and dry an hour later, and they went downtown to a bowling alley that she called to make sure was open. Neither of them was good at the game, but they had a ball playing, and then they went to a movie. She picked an action film in 3D she thought he’d like, and he loved it. He had never seen 3D before, and he was mesmerized by it. And then they had hot dogs for dinner at a deli, and stopped at a small grocery store for food before they went back to her apartment. It was dark and snowing again when they got back to her place. She asked if he’d like to sleep on the couch again, instead of going back to the shed, and he nodded. She made the bed up for him, and she left him there, watching TV, and went to her bedroom. Becky called her as soon as she lay down.
“You’re still alive? He hasn’t killed you yet?” She was only half-kidding. She had been worried sick about her all day, about her mental state and poor judgment to have done something so dangerous.
“No, and he’s not going to. It’s Christmas, Becky, give the kid a break.” She had given him more than a break, she had given him a great time, and they had both loved it.
“Will you get him out of there tomorrow?”
“I’ll see. I want to get him to the right place. He’s afraid of shelters.”
“Oh, for chrissake. I’m afraid for your life. Who cares if he’s afraid of shelters? Where’s his family?”
“I don’t know yet. His parents are both dead. He used to live with his aunt, but something went wrong there.”
“This isn’t your problem, Ginny. There are millions of homeless people in the world. You can’t take them all in. You can’t heal all the broken and wounded in the world. Just take care of yourself. Why don’t you look for a job in New York? I think all this humanitarian work you do gives you a Mother Teresa complex. Instead of picking up homeless orphans off the street, come and visit your father.” Ginny ignored the tart remark. Becky sounded tired.
“I don’t have a family to come home to, Becky,” Ginny reminded her. “It allows me to dedicate my life to others.”
“You have us. Move back to L.A.”
“I can’t. That would kill me,” Ginny said sadly. “And I don’t want a desk job in New York. I like what I’m doing. It fulfills me.”
“You can’t run around the world for the rest of your life. And if you want a family to come home to, you have to stay somewhere for more than ten minutes and stop going to war zones, and working in refugee camps. You need a real life, Gin, while you can still have one. If you do that stuff for long enough, you won’t be able to settle down again.”
“Maybe I don’t want to,” she said honestly. Then Becky had to drive her younger daughter to meet a friend, and mercifully got off the phone, and Ginny spent the rest of the evening reading, while Blue watched TV in the living room. She went to check on him at ten o’clock, and he was sound asleep in his bed on the couch, with the remote still in his hand. Ginny gently took it from him and put it on the trunk in front of him, covered him with the blanket, and turned off the light. Then she went back to her bedroom and closed the door, and read until midnight. She thought about what Becky had said to her, and she knew they were convinced she was crazy for taking Blue in, but it felt right to her for now, at this moment. She would figure it out later. She wanted to convince him to contact his aunt, and let her know he was okay. And then she wanted to get him into a good shelter where they could help him. For now, he was her mission. And by the time she left again, she wanted to know he was in good hands. She was convinced there was a reason their paths had crossed, and she was sure that was it. She was meant to get him to safe harbor, and she vowed to herself that she would. She turned off the light, and two minutes later she was sound asleep.
—
While Ginny cooked Blue breakfast the next day, he went on the Internet again and logged onto various sites. She noticed him on several youth and homeless sites again, where people posted messages for each other. And she saw him frowning as he read one of them more carefully than the others. As she set his plate of scrambled eggs down next to the computer, she saw that it was from someone named Charlene, who was asking him to call her, and it was obviously his aunt, since he had mentioned her name. Ginny looked at the site carefully without seeming to, so she could get back to it if he went out. Ginny wanted to contact her to learn more about Blue, and figure out what to do with him when she left New York.
She said something to Blue after breakfast about where he was going to stay in the future.
“You can’t go back to the shed, Blue. It’s too cold. And sooner or later someone from the city will lock it up again.”
“There are other places I can stay,” he said, jutting out his chin defiantly. Then he looked at her and the expression in his eyes grew soft. “Not as nice as this, though.”
“You can stay with me as long as I’m here,” she said generously. She didn’t realize how agonizingly lonely she had been before he arrived. Now she knew. “But I have to go back to work next month, and I’ll be gone for a while. Let’s find a good place for you to stay before I go.”
“Not a shelter,” he said, looking stubborn again.
“There are long-term places for homeless kids. Some of them sound pretty good—you can come and go as you want.” She had been checking them out on the Internet. It wouldn’t be an ideal situation, but it would afford him shelter, a place to stay, meals, counseling, and job placement if he wanted that. But he wasn’t really old enough to work.
“You just get ripped off in shelters, and most of the kids are on drugs.” She could tell that he wasn’t, which was remarkable given his hard life.
“Well, we’ll have to figure something out. I can’t take you with me.” It was as though she had adopted him, and was determined to solve his hou
sing situation, when in fact he was a fragile bird who had come to light on her branch, and was perched next to her for now. But he had no choice but to fly away again when she did, and she wanted him to be safe after she left.
“I just want a room somewhere and a job,” he said. It was a tall order for a boy his age, no matter how bright he was. No one hired eleven- or twelve-year-old boys, except as drug runners in bad neighborhoods, and Blue seemed to have stayed clear of that.
“How old are you, Blue? Honestly this time,” she said with a serious expression, and he didn’t answer for a while, clearly deciding whether or not to tell her the truth. And then finally he spoke up.
“I’m thirteen,” he growled at her, “but I can do a lot of stuff, I’m good on the computer, and I’m strong.” He was slight from lack of food, but he was willing.
“When was the last time you were in school?” She was afraid it might be years.
“September. I’m in eighth grade.”
“That means you could go to high school next year.” She thought about it for a minute and looked him in the eye. If Christopher had been alive, he would have been six. She had no experience with teenage boys, except her nephew, whom she had been too busy to pay much attention to while he was growing up. Her sister knew a lot more about kids than she did, but she couldn’t ask her about Blue. “I’ll make a deal with you,” Ginny said quietly. “If you go back to school, I’ll pay you for odd jobs you can do for me.”
“Like what?” He looked suspicious of the deal.
“There’s plenty you can do for me. The apartment needs regular cleaning. I want to move some stuff around. I guess I could get rid of my lovely furniture, and upgrade it a little.” She glanced around, and he grinned.
“Yeah, maybe we could burn it,” he quipped, and they both laughed.
“Let’s not be that extreme. You can do errands for me. We’ll figure it out.”
“How much do you pay?” he asked seriously, and she laughed again.
“Depends on the job. How about minimum wage?” He considered it and nodded. It sounded good to him.
“Why do I have to go to school? I always get bored there.”
“You’re going to be bored for the rest of your life if you don’t graduate. You’re a smart boy—you need to go to school. You can’t get a decent job unless you at least go to high school, and maybe one day you can go to college.”
“And then what?”
“That’s up to you. But without school, you’ll be dishing up fries at McDonald’s. You deserve better than that,” she said, convinced.
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me, I do.”
“You don’t even know me,” he challenged her.
“That’s true, but I know you’re smart, and you could go far if you wanted to.” She could see that he was a good kid. He was resourceful and enterprising—all he needed were some decent breaks. “Will you do it, go back to school, I mean? I’ll help you register in the public school near here. We can say you were away for a while.” It seemed like a lifetime before he answered, and then slowly he nodded and looked at her. He didn’t look happy about it, but he agreed.
“I’ll try it,” he compromised, “but if it’s boring and full of dummies, or the teachers are mean, I’m out of there.”
“No. Dummies or not, you stick it out till June, and go to high school in the fall. That’s the deal.” She stuck out her hand, wanting him to shake it, and finally he put his hand in hers.
“Okay. So when do I start work for you?”
“What about now? You can do the dishes, and vacuum the apartment. And we need some more groceries.” He had already finished the milk they bought the night before and she’d forgotten to buy fruit. “How about going to the store for me? I’ll make a list. What do you like to eat?” She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen off her desk and wrote down the basics, and he added his wish list of too-sweet cereals, fruit roll-ups, potato chips, cookies, beef jerky, peanut butter, all the things kids like to snack on, and sodas of every kind. “Your dentist is going to love me,” she said, rolling her eyes as he dictated to her, and then she realized he probably didn’t have one, but she didn’t want to ask. First things first, and getting him into school was top of her list. If nothing else, if she could get him off the streets, to a safe place, and get him back to school, her mission would be accomplished.
She sent him to the store a few minutes later with three twenty-dollar bills and the grocery list. And as soon as she heard the elevator doors close, she went to the laptop to the site he’d been on, and found the message to Blue from Charlene. It was dated the day before. Ginny responded quickly, hoping it was his aunt—she remembered that he had referred to her as Charlene when they talked about bowling.
“I have information about Blue. He is safe, well, and in good hands. Please call me, Virginia Carter,” and she added her cell phone number.
Ginny was sitting on the couch, innocently reading a magazine, when he got back, carrying the bag of groceries, and he diligently gave her the change. And then he started a list of the time he was spending doing errands, so she could pay him for his time. She smiled when she saw him do it and nodded. “Very businesslike,” she said approvingly, and she was surprised to see that his handwriting was steady, legible, and neat.
He spent part of the day vacuuming and cleaning her apartment, and helping her move furniture, and he threw out her long-dead plant with a look of disgust. And that afternoon they went for a walk. They walked past the public school she had in mind for him, it wasn’t far away, although they didn’t know where he’d be living, and he made a face. They walked past a church then, and the face he made was even worse. He looked angry and venomous.
“You don’t like churches, either?” She was surprised. He had very definite ideas. She wasn’t deeply religious, but she had an ongoing sense of communication with God, in a loose form that worked for her.
“I hate priests,” Blue said, nearly snarling.
“Why?” She wanted to know more about him, but he was very private about his life. Like a flower, she had to wait for the petals to unfurl on their own. She didn’t want to push, but she was intrigued by what he said about the clergy.
“I just hate them. They’re jerks. And really fake. They pretend to be good people and they’re not.”
“Some are,” she said quietly. “Not all priests are bad or good. They’re just people.”
“Yeah, but they like to pretend they’re God.” He seemed agitated as he said it, and she didn’t want to upset him, so she didn’t argue the point. Blue clearly had total contempt for them all.
They went to another movie after dinner, this time not in 3D, but they enjoyed it anyway, and talked about it on the way back to her apartment. It was beginning to feel familiar walking along with him and talking, almost as though they had known each other for longer than they had. He had a good sense of humor, and was very articulate, and as soon as they got back to the apartment he asked her how much he’d made that day, helping her. They added it up, and he was pleased at the amount. He grinned happily at her and turned on the TV. She kept checking her phone for messages from Charlene, but she had none so far. She wondered if she’d call back and hoped she would.
She did some work that night on her laptop and saw that Blue had been on the kids’ homeless site again. She wondered if he was looking for a message from someone in particular.
And in the morning, while Ginny was still in bed, Charlene called on her cell phone. She was indeed his aunt.
“Who are you?” she asked Ginny immediately. “Are you a social worker, with an agency for kids? Are you a cop?” She sounded both suspicious and relieved. Ginny explained how they had met and that Blue was sleeping on her couch.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” Ginny asked, curious about her and what had happened, and she wondered if the woman on the phone would tell her the truth. She had a pleasant, intelligent voice.
“No
t since September. It just wasn’t working out here. I’ve got three kids in a tiny apartment with one bathroom and no space to move around. My kids sleep in the bedroom. I sleep on the couch, and Blue was sleeping on the floor. That’s no way for a boy to live. It would break his mama’s heart if she knew he has no home.” She regarded his situation with Ginny as temporary, as Ginny did herself. “And he doesn’t like my boyfriend,” she added cautiously, once she knew that Ginny had no official capacity. “He drinks a bit, and they fight all the time. Blue doesn’t like the way he talks to me. He’s very protective, a little too much so at times. They got in a bad argument, and my guy took a swing at him. Blue left after that. There really is no room for both of them here, and Harold stays here sometimes. When he does, Blue was sleeping in the tub, and we only have the one bathroom. Blue’s father was a lot like Harold—he beat Blue up a bunch of times, and his mama, too. She was such a good woman, and she loved that boy to death. There was nothing she wouldn’t have done for him—it was all she was worried about when she died. I took him in, I promised her I would, but I only had one baby then. With three, I just can’t. No money, no space, no time. He needs to get in the foster care system and get a decent home.”
“He doesn’t seem to want that, and he might be too old for people to want to foster him. At thirteen, kids can be tough.”
“He’s a good boy, and smart,” his aunt said lovingly. “He’s had some bad breaks with his mama dying. And his daddy was never around. He went to prison for dealing drugs, and died there three years ago, but Blue hardly ever saw him anyway. I’m the only blood relative he’s got.” It sounded like a sad situation to Ginny, and her heart ached for him. She knew there were thousands of kids like him, but there was something special about Blue, which had touched her heart.
“I’d like to get him into an adolescent homeless shelter, and he’s agreed to go back to school,” Ginny said hopefully.
“He won’t stick at either,” his aunt said knowingly. She knew him too well, far better than Ginny. “He always runs away, from everything. He’ll run away from you, too. He’s like a wild thing now—if you get too close to him, he runs. I think he’s scared, or maybe he thinks we’re all going to die like his mama and daddy.” It was a valuable insight into him. “But he’s a nice kid,” she said again.
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