by Darlene Ryan
I could sense Q standing behind me. “The bag of quarters is in my jacket pocket,” I said. “I need Band-Aids and some kind of cream with antibiotics. And aspirin.” I didn’t turn around to look at him. “There’s an all-night drugstore somewhere. I don’t know where.”
And I didn’t care. That was his problem. I knew about the all-night drugstore because Hannah had gotten stuff from there one time when I was staying at Pax House and a woman had shown up with her kids after her husband had banged her face into a cement block wall about twelve times.
I heard Q pull on his clothes and get his jacket and boots. He touched my shoulder as he went past me, but he didn’t say anything and neither did I.
It took a long time to clean Leo’s face. His left cheek was scraped raw. There was a gash over his eye and another cut in his hair. His right eye was swollen shut. Even though I couldn’t see them, I knew there had to be bruises. And there was gravel and other crap stuck to his skin.
I threw the towel in the bathtub—it was ruined. Then I got a bottle of water from the cooler, glad that I’d listened to Lucy when she’d pushed me to grab a couple of the bottles we’d found with the wrapped sandwiches at the bakery.
I put the bottle in Leo’s hand. He took a drink, coughed and took another and then another.
When Q came back, he had some kind of anti-everything cream in a tube, plus gauze pads and tape. I put cream on most of Leo’s face and the back of his right hand and I used the tape to stick one of the gauze pads on top of the cut by his eye. That was all I knew how to do, and I probably wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t been at Pax the night that woman came in. I sent a thank-you to Hannah out into the universe.
Leo needed to see a doctor. And I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Leo would run. Q was right about that.
Q rolled up his jacket and made a pillow for Leo. Then he made a bed for me on his mattress, rolling up in a blanket on the floor beside it. We didn’t talk at all, but when I reached out into the dark for his hand, I found it.
I wanted to run. I thought about it, about sitting up, getting my boots and my backpack and taking off. Q said that foster care was worse than being on the street. But was it? Was this better for Dylan? It wasn’t better for Leo. Being here was better than wherever he’d been, but was it better than getting off the street altogether? If I went, Q wouldn’t have any choice. He’d have to at least take Dylan somewhere.
Then I thought about Dylan’s arm sliding around my neck. If I disappeared, what would that do to him? And what about Leo? I knew in my gut, in a way that I couldn’t put into words, that if I was gone Leo would be too. Maybe he’d take off before morning anyway, but I knew he’d run if I did.
I stared at the window. Was the right answer in here or out there? I slid my hand out of Q’s. He sighed in his sleep. Then I heard another sound.
Leo was crying—so softly that if I hadn’t been awake, I wouldn’t have heard him. The sound made my throat tighten and my eyes swim with tears. I didn’t move because I didn’t know what I should do, and then for some reason I remembered the first time Evan hit me. He struck me across the face with the back of his open hand so hard that I went over sideways in my chair onto the floor. I cried that time. It was the only time I cried. The second time I got even, and the third time I got away. But the first time, I cried, and no one came. No. One. Came.
I crawled over to Leo and took his hand. He jerked the way he always did when someone got close, but I didn’t let go. I laced my fingers in his and held on just as tight as I could. After a minute I slid next to him, my shoulder against his and my back against the wall. I wiped my own tears away. We sat there like that for a long, long time.
I couldn’t let him take off. Which meant I had to stay too. “Wanna know a secret?” I said softly. “I’m afraid of the dark. Stupid, huh?”
“No,” he whispered after a moment.
“My dad, he always said there’s nothing there in the darkness that isn’t there in the light.” He had, and when he’d been alive, it had been true, and if he was still alive, it would probably still be true, but he wasn’t and it wasn’t. “But that’s not true, Leo,” I said. “There’s bad stuff in the dark and bad people, and it’s just better if we stick together.”
He didn’t say anything.
“So don’t take off, okay? Stay with us. I won’t let anybody hurt you, and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Just please don’t…” I didn’t know what else to say.
The moment between us got longer and longer and longer. Finally Leo whispered just one word into the darkness: “Okay.”
He fell asleep after a while, and I went back to my mattress. Q was sprawled on the floor with his mouth hanging open. Dylan, like always, was curled into a little ball like one of those fuzzy caterpillars. Leo slept the same way. I watched all three of them. I watched them sleep for a while, and I knew that they were my family now. I thought about being a doctor one last time, and then I put the idea away, the same way I had with all the memories of my dad, because it was just better not to think about some things.
Leo was still there in the morning. His face was bad. Nothing looked infected and nothing seemed to be broken, but I was just guessing.
Dylan stared, and I was just about to send him in to wash his hands when he crawled over to Leo. “Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Yeah, some,” Leo said.
Dylan thought about that for a minute. “Are you going to stay here?” he said.
Q was just coming out of the bathroom. “Yes,” he said. He jerked his head toward the open door behind him. “Go get ready for breakfast,” he said to Dylan, who smiled at Leo and crab-walked to the bathroom.
Q turned to Leo. “I’m not going to ask what happened last night because I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t tell me. If you stay here with us, nobody will touch you. You wanna help out, that’s good, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Okay?”
Leo nodded. “Okay.”
We had breakfast, and I was glad the haul from last night had been so good. After Q left, I got the food organized. Everything was easier with Leo around. I wondered if he had a little brother or sister; Dylan was bugging him all the time, but he never got mad.
We went to St. Paul’s for bag lunches to add to what I’d gotten from scavenging. Leo kept the hood of his sweatshirt up, and it hid the worst of his face.
“How did you get all this food?” Leo asked. We were in the park again. Dylan was hopping around the bench pretending to be a rabbit because it was the only way I could get him to eat salad.
I told Leo about meeting Lucy and about all the food that got thrown out. “You can come sometime, if you want,” I said. “Nobody asks any questions.”
Dylan had hopped his way over to the slide. “Are you and Q a couple?” Leo asked.
I’d never really thought about that, which was weird, considering we’d had sex and Q had said he loved me more than once. “Yeah, I guess we are,” I said. “But most people think we’re brother and sister, and I let them.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do.”
Dylan waved from the top of the slide, and I waved back.
“He’s your little brother, right?” Leo said. “Not Q’s.”
I shook my head. He was part of the family. He deserved to know the truth. “His parents left him, well, his father anyway.” I told him the story.
“They didn’t come back? You’re sure?”
I kicked a dented tennis ball across the grass. It looked like it had been chewed by someone’s dog. “They didn’t come back. There’s a guy Q knows up there who works maintenance at All-mart, and he’s been watching for them. And Q’s been back too, probably five or six times.” I shot a quick sideways look at Leo. His face was starting to look better already.
“Is anyone looking for you?” I said.
He closed his eyes for a second and shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
He wouldn’t look at me. “I have bad in me,” he said. “I shouldn’t be around you, or Dylan, or anybody.”
“You don’t have bad in you,” I said, not even trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “And whoever told you that is full of shit.”
He didn’t say anything.
I got in his face because everything I’d been feeling was suddenly coming out as mad. “You think there’s bad in Dylan?” I asked. He was going down the slide feet first on his stomach. “His family just left him, left him, in the parking lot at All-mart.”
Leo shook his head, but he still wouldn’t look at me.
I couldn’t stop. It was all spewing out of me now. “And what about me? Is there bad in me?” It was the first time I’d actually said it out loud, because sometimes I thought maybe it was true. Maybe Evan was right, and maybe I was going to burn in hell. “That’s what my mother’s boyfriend said. He said I was going to burn in hell forever. You think he’s right, huh? You think he’s right?” Bits of spit were spraying out all over the place.
“No!” Leo looked at me then. “You’re not bad and neither is Dylan. They’re bad.”
I knew he meant Evan, and Dylan’s parents.
“Then you can’t be bad either,” I said. I swallowed a couple of times. “The bad is in the person who hurt you.” All the anger had turned into something else all of a sudden, and I thought I was going to start crying. I blinked like crazy because I really hated girls who cried at everything.
“I can’t go back,” Leo said. We were back to not looking at each other again.
“Yeah, well, you can stay here,” I said. I knew for sure then that I didn’t have to worry about him running anymore.
Q came home with another air mattress and a blanket for Leo. I didn’t ask him where he got the money, but he hadn’t given me back the bag of quarters. He’d also gotten a deck of cards. He sat on the floor by the window after supper shuffling through the cards and reading his poker book.
I watched him for a while. I could tell he was frustrated by the way he kept yanking his hands back through his hair. Finally I went over and sat beside him. Leo was building a tunnel for Dylan’s train with the wooden blocks.
“It’s just a game, Q,” I said.
He let out a breath before he answered me. “It’s our best chance of getting a house and getting out of here.”
“We’ll find some other way.”
He did the hair-hand thing again. “What other way?” he said.
I leaned back against a stack of boxes. “I don’t know. There has to be something.”
“I’m good at poker, Maddie,” Q said. There were black circles under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved this morning. “I just need to know more about how to figure the odds.” He stretched his arms out to the sides. “It’s so friggin’ boring.”
“So let it go for tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can,” I said. “I’ll give you a chocolate chip cookie. Fresh from the garbage.”
He shook his head at me, trying not to smile.
“C’mon,” I said. “Yummy, yummy garbage cookies. You know you want one.” I rubbed my stomach.
That made him laugh. He closed the book and set it up on the box. Then he leaned back beside me.
“Lucy’s friend, Franz, sells stuff he finds,” I said. “At this flea market they have in the mall on Sunday afternoon. Maybe we could do that.”
Q rested his head against mine, and when Leo and Dylan weren’t looking, he kissed me on the side of the forehead. “Yeah, and how much does he make? Fifty bucks?”
“I’m not sure.”
“There are some high-stakes games out there. Kids at the university, where Mommy and Daddy are paying for everything. One win at one of those games and we’d be set. All I need is to work on this odds stuff and get a bit more practice.” He kissed my ear this time. “One win will give us everything.”
Right. So what would one loss give us?
fourteen
Q played poker again on Friday night. He had another bag of quarters on Saturday morning. We went to the soup line both days for lunch. Leo was jumpy, like he was gonna come out of his skin. I wondered if he was afraid whoever smashed his face would show up. It was healing nicely. He didn’t need a bandage on the cut anymore, and I just put the cream on at night.
Q helped me take all the blankets and towels to get washed. Staying even halfway clean was a lot of work. It cost money for the washers. It cost money for the dryers. Soap cost money. None of us had enough clothes that we could have clean stuff every day. At least we sort of had hot water most of the time. But the bars of soap and bottles of half-used shampoo I’d gotten at the university went way faster than I’d expected.
I was always afraid we smelled.
Monday night I was outside Whole Village dividing up half a box of small cartons of yogurt when I heard my name. Lucy looked up, and I looked around. Hannah had just crossed the street at the corner.
I stood up.
“Is everything okay?” Lucy asked.
“Yeah, I know her,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I walked over to Hannah.
She looked past me to where Franz was laying bags of lettuce on the sidewalk. “Maddie, what are you doing?” she asked.
“We’re not breaking any laws,” I said.
She touched my arm. “You don’t have to eat from the garbage. Come back to Pax House.”
“I’m not eating from the garbage. We’re gathering food that’s still good so it won’t end up in the garbage.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Hannah said.
It was so easy for her to tell me what I should do. I was pretty sure that cute sweater she was wearing hadn’t been at the bottom of a bin at the thrift store. And I knew if I stepped a bit closer, she’d smell like coconut soap that probably hadn’t come from a Dumpster.
“I want to do this,” I said. I looked over my shoulder. Lucy had stood up and was looking at us. “I have to go.”
She caught my sleeve. “Come see me tomorrow.”
Lucy started toward us.
“I’ll be there until eight.”
“Maddie, you all right?” Lucy raised her voice so Hannah would hear.
“Maybe,” I said to Hannah.
She let go, and I walked back to Lucy. “She giving you a hard time?” Lucy asked.
“She…uh…” I pointed to the bags. “She doesn’t get it.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Lots of people don’t.”
I really wished Hannah hadn’t seen me. I was going to have to go see her now, and I didn’t want to. But I didn’t want her to make trouble for everyone else. What if she went to the store manager? Or what if she called the police? I didn’t think she would, but it would just be easier if I went.
After we’d eaten the next night, I pulled Q into the bathroom. “I gotta go do something, and I’ll tell you about it later, I swear. It shouldn’t take me any more than about an hour.”
“Is it another Dumpster thing?” he asked.
It was hard to stand still. I wanted to get going and get it over with. “Not exactly,” I said. “But it kinda has to do with it. I’ll explain it all when I get back. Okay?”
His eyes narrowed, and he studied my face for a minute. “Yeah, go,” he said. “But be careful.”
I made sure I had my whistle, told Leo and Dylan I’d be back soon and left. It was weird being out by myself. I always had somebody with me, Q or Dylan and now Leo, and Lucy and the others on Monday nights. I could walk as fast as I wanted. I didn’t have to talk. I didn’t have to listen.
I knew one of the guys at the door at Pax. Jayson. He remembered me too. Jayson had huge hands. I’d always figured there was no trouble when he was around because he looked like he could squeeze the brains right out of your head with just one of those hands. I could do it with a tomato, say, but I just had the feeling Jay could do it with somebody’s head.
I told him Hannah
wanted to see me. “Yeah, she said you might come by. Everything okay for you?”
Had Hannah told him she’d seen me going through the garbage? “I’m good, Jay,” I said.
He held the door open. “I think Hannah’s in her office.”
She was in the kitchen. She smiled when she saw me. “Maddie, I’m so glad you came,” she said. “Can I get you something to eat?”
I shook my head. “No thanks.” I didn’t usually turn down food, but I wasn’t hungry and I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.
“C’mon back to my office,” Hannah said.
I followed her through the kitchen and down the hall. She dropped into one of the two black chairs on the visitors’ side of her desk and pointed at the other one. “Have a seat, Maddie,” she said.
I knew what this meant. This meant we were going to have one of those “friend” conversations. She’d had them with other people, not just me, and she did it on this side of the desk. I’d figured that out from listening in on stuff that was pretty much none of my business, but what the hey, I was bored a lot when I’d stayed at Pax.
Hannah would lean forward in the chair and start with, “I’m your friend.” Then she’d tell you how you could fix your life in three easy steps.
I sat down, but on the edge of the seat because I wasn’t going to be there very long.
“You haven’t been around,” she said. “How are you?”
It must have been a really crazy day, because she didn’t have any lip gloss on and there was a tiny bit of something—maybe broccoli—stuck between her bottom front teeth. “I’m good,” I said.
“I was surprised to see you last night.”
I shrugged. Where did she expect to see me? Pushing a cart in the Superstore?
“I’m worried about you.”
“You don’t need to worry. I’m okay.”
She leaned her elbows on her knees and laced her fingers together, kind of like she was going to pray for me. “C’mon, Maddie,” she said. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”