by Meg Elison
Parents always tell their kids to finish their food because there are starving people in Africa or Southeast Asia or somewhere, but I’m glad that most of the kids don’t listen, because I’m starving right here. I learned to pull this trick when I was really little, before Andy was even born. Mom would buy a cup of coffee and read a newspaper for hours. I would slip away to other tables, as sneaky and quick as a little rat. Sometimes it works where adults have been, but I’ve tested it fewer times. I look like I belong at a messy table where kids have sat. And the best bet is always other kids. They leave behind big messes of pancake syrup and scrambled eggs with cheese and ketchup. Even the best eaters miss whole slices of toast. Mom would pick up tips, quick as a magician, and make them disappear. We were a pair of thieves back then.
Today’s table is pretty good. A little ham-and-egg sandwich left, a couple of big swallows of orange juice and coffee. The littlest kid smeared oatmeal all over the table, that’s no good to me. The mom left her whole fruit cup—think of the starving children, Mom. I’m already standing as I get the last slice of somebody’s whole-wheat toast wrapped in a napkin and stuffed in my pocket. The waitress is gone back to the kitchen, and my eyes slide over her tip money: six dollars folded neatly under a coffee cup.
“I could give you some money.”
I leave it and walk quickly out the door. I’m only stealing food that would have gone into the trash. If I take that money, if I say yes to some guy who offers me money, I become somebody else. Somebody like Mom.
Not today.
The whole day lies ahead of me, and all I want to do is sleep. I have nowhere to be until sundown. Now that I’ve eaten, my eyes feel heavy, and I know I’m gonna fall asleep soon whether I want to or not.
Too sleepy to think. Think. Where can I sleep safely and be left alone?
The RV hasn’t seemed like a good idea since all those cops were there. I miss that little loft with a pain in my chest like it was my home since birth. The tree house is a bad option in broad daylight. The library won’t let me sleep there, and the ones I know best might spot me and know who I am. Mom’s office can’t possibly be safe anymore, and if my laundry-room keys still work, daytime is not a good bet for them, either.
But the laundry keys open one other thing.
I think Andy and I spent more time in the pool than in our house. The water is cloudy today. It doesn’t look like the filter is working or anybody has added chlorine in a while. Mom sent me to do it more than once when the maintenance man couldn’t make it.
Really, it was a pool that got me interested in science. Not this pool, but our first one when we moved to California. Mom got a job as a custodian at a fancier apartment complex, and she had to take care of the pool. She took us with her some days, I don’t know why. The times when she was nice to us made even less sense than when she’d just check out or leave us home alone. Andy would swim around and around in the little baby pool while Mom showed me how to skim the water with a net, how to clean the leaves out of the filter trap. We found live ducks and frogs in the pool sometimes. The ducks I could just scare away, but the frogs I’d have to catch. There was one swimming in circles, one day. Pseudacris cadaverina, maybe. It was pale, not green like I expected.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?” She was arching away from the long handle of the pool skimmer, trying to get something from the middle of the surface.
“Why doesn’t the chlorine kill the frog?” I was trying to catch it in my bare hands. It was slippery and quick.
“It only kills little things. Bacteria. Not big things, like frogs or people.” Her cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, and her forehead was scrunched up. She saw that I had caught the frog and released it gently into a planter with a sago palm, Cycas revoluta, in it. “Go get the test.”
The test was a little plastic square with a vial stuck to either side. It came in a bigger plastic box that held the little yellow and red droppers. I brought it to her expectantly. I couldn’t wait to see how it worked.
Mom filled the vials with pool water and then added drops slowly.
The water on the left turned pale yellow.
“See that? The pool needs chlorine.” She tapped a long, jagged fingernail on the miniature color chart that showed the acceptable color range and pH numbers. I nodded. I saw.
She dropped a little red into the vial on the right. “And it needs acid. See the pH level is almost eight?” She held up the test, and the sunlight caught it. For a second, I was living some other life where my mom was a scientist and showing me the laboratory.
After she’d showed me, I always ran the test. It felt important. I was keeping the pool safe.
I would never jump into this cloudy pool I’m looking at today. I step on the broken fence to open the gate and look around. It’s too early, nobody is swimming. No frogs, no ducks. Casually, I try my key in the utility-room door.
It still works.
I feel like I ought to do something to earn my space. In the utility closet, I pull a big scoop of chlorine from the bucket. I walk back into the sunlight and throw the granules out into the deep end, my arm making a wide arc just like Mom’s. I go back and get another scoop of diatomaceous earth and dump it in the filter, just like she taught me. Mostly when the water is cloudy, that’s what it needs. I don’t have to test it to know that.
When that’s done, I lock myself into the utility room. Really, it’s a closet and I have to shove pool chemicals and buckets around to get enough room to lie down. There’s a pile of old red awnings in there, though, from some attempt years ago to pretty this place up. That must have been about as convincing as tying a bow around a toilet, but I’m glad they’re in here. I lie on top of most of them and under the last one. They’re dirty, and something I can’t really see crawls away when I shake the top one, and I don’t care at all. I am no stranger to Blattella germanica.
I get the best sleep I’ve ever had.
When I wake up, I turn my phone on to see what time it is. Wi-Fi from some nearby unprotected router gives me a weak signal. I’ve slept all day, and people on Twitter are predicting that I won’t show up.
But I don’t have anywhere else to be.
Sundown
The sky is deep orange with flat purple clouds by the time I walk to the old Walmart. I eat my slice of pocket toast on the way there, wondering if I can go back to the pool room tonight. I’ve never stayed in a nice hotel, but I bet that’s what it’s like. Perfect. Dark. Warm. Secure.
Well, nice hotels obviously have lights that work, and you don’t have to sleep with buckets of chlorine and acid all around you. But you get the idea.
There’s a small crowd in the parking lot. So this must be the right place. I’m already filming. The walk up will be bumpy, and I’m going to have to give it to Kristi to edit.
Hopefully she’ll do it for me.
She’s the first one I see. She’s chewing her lip nervously, and she’s holding hands with Emerson Berkeley, with his shy smile and their coordinated black hoodies.
Fuck them both.
Amber Rodin tosses her curly hair to one side in the wind, as if to call attention to how great it is.
Mackenzie Biros is holding a camera just like mine, standing right next to Jane. Jane is obviously prepared to appear on camera. Her makeup looks like something an Instagram influencer would do. I put my camera down and realize my hands are filthy. There’s black under my fingernails, and my face . . .
I hold the camera up and get a shot of my own face, turning the viewer around so that I can see it.
I look like I literally rolled in dirt. #selfie. Checking myself out would have been a great idea a few hours ago. Now there’s nothing I can do.
Paul DeMarco has to be the one to say it, though. Because of course he does.
“You look like you slept in a dumpster.”
Jane rolls her eyes. “She did that on purpose. She’s trying to look pathetic so that we believe her story.”
&nbs
p; Ryan Audubon is staring at me, but not in the way that he usually stares at me. It’s like he has a soul in there somewhere.
“What?” I bark it at him.
“You . . . you look really skinny.”
Mackenzie pans the camera toward him.
“I mean, you’re always skinny. But right now, like your face is skinny.”
Jane to the rescue, once again. “So? She could be on a diet to make herself look skinny and sad. Okay, let’s start.”
She clears her throat, and Mackenzie turns the lens toward her face.
“I’m Jane Chase, and I’ve known Layla Bailey for like four years now. She has always been a drama queen, telling stories about me to try and get me in trouble. Her recent viral video went way beyond what she usually does, trying to make it look like her mom is some kind of monster and she was like a prisoner in this rotting house. Layla, how did you do it? How did you fake that whole video?”
Mackenzie turns the camera to me, and for a minute I’m sure this video is going to go viral too because I’m going to beat everyone in this parking lot to death. Most of the great apes do that. Chimps have wars. Gorillas tear each other apart. H. sapiens is the best at it, but I’ve never done it before. I’m sure that I can.
Fuck Ryan’s pity. Fuck Kristi and Emerson and their hands and their hoodies. Fuck Paul for being here, and fuck Jane for always being Jane. But fuck Mackenzie most of all, for falling in line with whatever Jane says. Nobody would listen to Jane if she didn’t always have these followers around her.
I clear my throat.
“Okay, Jane. You got me. I faked the whole thing.”
“That’s right! I knew it!” She’s holding up her phone, rolling some video she shot. I can see the graffiti of ten-foot-tall dicks on the walls inside those abandoned houses near the freeway. It’s not even close to my biome.
“That’s pathetic, Jane. That doesn’t look anything like my video. Let me tell you how I did it. I’m much better at this than you are.”
Mackenzie swings away from Jane and back to me.
“I broke the pipes in my mom’s house months ago, to get the leak going. I planted those mushrooms and tended them by hand until they looked perfect, growing out of my brother’s dresser. I broke the front door with my massive incredible strength and then I forced my mom to never fix it. I wrecked my own clothes so that I would always look like shit and then I called the power company and told them to turn off our lights.”
“In these houses I saw—”
I cut her off so fast that Mackenzie doesn’t even have time to turn around. “That’s right, Jane. When you met me in fifth grade, I was already tangling up my own hair. I did it on purpose so that you’d call me Brillohead and make me cry. Remember when you did that?”
“That wasn’t—” Nope. She’s starting to look like this isn’t going the way she planned.
“I called the school and demanded free lunches. I gave myself lice over and over just to get some time off. I purposely got my period and bled through my pants that one time so that you could point it out to everyone before I could fix it, and so that everyone would laugh when I got up to leave the room. Remember that, Mackenzie? You were there. In fact, you were all there. That was in last year’s gifted class.”
The boys are looking at the ground as if their eyes have weights in them. Kristi looks ready to cry, but she’s so emotional.
“Layla, we didn’t all laugh.”
“It’s okay, Kristi. It doesn’t matter. Because I faked the whole thing. Mackenzie, focus on Kristi’s face, she looks really dramatic right now.”
Kristi buries her head in Emerson’s shoulder.
Jane is staring me down behind Mackenzie. If looks could kill, we’d have both died a long time ago. But looks don’t kill and words don’t hurt and this is all fake, so nothing matters.
“I stayed at school anytime there was a field trip that required money, because it seemed way more fun than the zoo. Remember that time Jane told everyone to put pennies in my desk, Mackenzie? That was hilarious, and I totally faked that. I totally faked being hungry and dirty and unlucky, specifically because it has been so awesome to be the subject of your jokes these last few years. I finally had to stop faking it so hard, because I got sick of laughing so much every day.”
Mackenzie lowers the camera and she’s crying. “Wait, Layla. You don’t—”
“Oh no, Mackenzie. Keep rolling. We’re not done here.”
“Yes we are. We’re done.” Jane tries to pull the camera out of her hand, and Mackenzie pushes her off. Kristi and Emerson step toward her, and we’re about to fight in this parking lot, all of us. It should have been a fight a long time ago, but I’m glad it’s happening today. I’m ready for a fight.
“Jane, I faked my whole life. I faked that day my mom came to the school just so you’d write super funny tweets about it, and I’ve been faking being on the run since then. But the best thing I made up was you.”
She’s got her mouth open to talk, but I’m not giving her a second to speak. Ever again.
“I faked having this stupid bitch bully me every day about stuff that wasn’t funny or okay to joke about. This was all a really fun game, but I’m done faking it now. You don’t exist anymore, and neither do I. You’re going to try to show this video to someone and all that will be there will be ten minutes of silence in this parking lot. I was never here, and neither were you. It was all pretend. You got that, Mackenzie? All clear there? Glad you were a part of it?”
Amber Rodin is crying now, too. “Layla, I’m so sorry. This is so messed up.”
“You don’t exist, Amber. Neither does your hair.” She touches it like she’s never noticed it before.
I turn to leave them. I am definitely going back to that pool closet. I want to be buried there.
I hear Jane and Mackenzie struggling over the camera, and I turn to look.
“It’s too late. I was streaming it.” Mackenzie looks like someone slapped her in the face with a bag of frozen fish sticks.
“Why? What the hell, Mack?” Jane is wresting the camera away from her, and just as Ryan steps in to break them up, red and blue lights churn into the night.
It’s perfect. At the exact same time, they all look up at me with the eyes of cartoon characters who see the steamroller pressing toward them. The lights are coming from behind me.
I turn around and face what seems like an army of cops.
Monday Evening
Officially, I was arrested for stealing the camera from the school.
I can’t deny it. It was in my hands when the cops took my backpack and searched my pockets. I lost the neoprene case somewhere. They didn’t find anything else, though, despite the female officer’s repeated questions about whether or not I had drugs.
“If I had drugs, wouldn’t I have money?”
“Just answer the question.” The cop’s voice was more tired than angry.
They brought me to the police station after everyone else’s parents came and got them. It was spectacular seeing Bette and Mr. Chase from the back seat of a police car. What I’ll never forget is that none of them looked surprised.
The cops didn’t book me, and the female officer told me the school probably wouldn’t press charges.
Another woman walks in, and I know instantly that she is a social worker. She gets me a glass of water and asks the cops to cut my zip tie off. We sit at a metal table.
“Thanks for getting them to uncuff me.” I rub my wrists and take a drink.
“My name is Michelle Jones.”
“Layla Bailey. Nice to meet you, Ms. Jones.”
She looks at me the way teachers do on the first day. “It’s actually Dr. Jones. I usually tell little ones to call me Miss Michelle, but you’re not a little one, are you?”
“No.”
She keeps looking at me, waiting.
“Should I call you Doc?”
“That’d be fine. I’d like to call you Layla, if that’s alright.” Her
lipstick is just a little bit purple, and I can see that she’s trying not to smile.
“That’s fine, Doc.”
“Alright, first things first. You’re not being charged, but you are not free to go.”
“How does that work?”
She sets down her tablet and sighs. “I know you’ve been on your own for a while, and taking care of yourself for a while before that. But the fact is, you’re a minor. So until we figure out if you have any family, you’re going to have to go into foster care.”
“Oh.” My water glass is empty.
“Now, I know you don’t like the sound of that. I watched your video, and I can tell you that every single foster family house in the system will be nicer than where you were living. I know some nice people who can provide you with your own room. They’ll take you today.”
“I want to see my brother, Andy. Can you arrange that?”
She nods, looking at her tablet. “Yes, I thought that might be a priority for you. So, listen. I can arrange for you to see him as early as tomorrow, but I need something from you.”
I look up at her eyes. As brown as mine, as my mother’s, but so different.
“What?”
“You’re a smart kid. You have the skills to be a successful runaway. It’s really easy for you to disappear, right?”
No use lying to her. “Right.”
“I need you to give me your word that you won’t do that to these people. I’m going to take you to my favorite foster family—I mean these are the nicest people I’ve ever met. They are really good to the kids I bring there. But I’m gonna do that, and I’m gonna bring your little brother over for dinner, if and only if you promise me not to slip out in the middle of the night and scare them. Will you stay put?”
What happens to bad foster kids? You’re already in the place where you go when nobody wants you. Where do you go after that?
I want to tell her that I’ll do whatever I need to do. That I won’t promise anything, and be a total badass runaway. But I’m so tired of everything and everyone. I want something different. I don’t know what it is, but my current methods aren’t producing the desired result. I have to do something different to get something different. So I nod.