Better Than the Best Plan

by Lauren Morrill

  “At this time, we’re interviewing members of the commune and trying to determine who knew what and who is culpable,” Detective Lance Brown said. “We’re working cooperatively with the DEA, DCF, the Department of Agriculture, and others to get the facts and ensure the minor children are cared for.”

  I read the article six or seven times, trying to pull out as many facts as I can. The address on the DCF form matches the address in the article, and the dates line up, too. And this artist-colony-meets-organic-farm sounds like exactly the kind of place my mom would want to live. Which makes me the six-month-old in the article, the youngest of the kids living at a place called Plough and Stars.

  I search through the stack of papers and shake the envelope again to make sure there’s nothing else stuck in the corner, but there’s no follow-up article. There’s nothing to tell me if my mom knew there was pot growing there, nothing to tell me if she thought it was a good idea to have her six-month-old baby around a drug operation. Though it tells me something that I don’t find this all particularly surprising. What I find most surprising is that this is the first I’ve ever heard of it. My mom, the paragon of honesty and openness, who spent more time trying to be my friend than my mother (with brief stints attempting to be my spiritual guru), never told me that she was arrested or that I was taken away from her.

  I don’t know what I’d expected when Tess told me that I’d been in foster care before, but it wasn’t this. A drug raid? I drop the papers and read through the article again, my palms starting to sweat as my hands shake, tears beginning to well up. This is all so much worse than I could have imagined.

  “Ritzy, you okay?” Lainey’s voice trails off as she pokes her head into the room and takes in the scene before her. And hearing her voice pulls me back to reality and sends the tears tumbling down my cheeks. All I can do is shake my head. No.

  Lainey rushes across the floor, dropping to her knees next to me and pulling me into a hug. I cry into her curly hair, a million thoughts racing through my head. I’m so mad and so confused and so hurt. I have some answers, but they’ve only brought up more questions, and the one person who can answer them all for me isn’t here.

  When I finally catch my breath, I sit back and swipe at the tracks of tears on my cheeks. Then I push the newspaper article, still resting atop the file folder, toward Lainey so she can read it.

  “Holy crap,” she says. She points to the mention of the six-month-old. “This was you?”

  I shrug. “That’s my guess, though who even knows, right?”

  “There’s someone else you can ask about this, you know,” she says, passing the envelope to me. I clutch it to my chest, the only evidence of my history I have so far. Lainey is right, of course. I could ask the person who took me in. I could ask the person who gave me back. I could ask the person who was there for all those beginnings and milestones, the one who wasn’t my mother but certainly acted like it.

  Without a word, I carefully fold the newspaper article and place it inside the file folder, then stack my birth certificate and Social Security card on top. I put the whole thing back into the envelope.

  “We should finish,” I say, clutching the envelope to my chest. “I don’t want to miss the beach.”

  Lainey looks like she wants to say something more, but she keeps her mouth shut and nods. She reaches for the third bag, the one I hadn’t quite filled. “This ready to go?” she asks. When I nod, she ties it off with the red plastic handles and hauls it over her shoulder. “I finished up the kitchen. Give it a look to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind, okay? Then we’ll do your room.”

  * * *

  It takes another two hours to finish up in the apartment. We throw everything we can in boxes or trash bags, though thankfully most of the apartment’s contents belong to the complex. Most of what we have are clothes and bedding, with a few stray books from my shelf. I leave the garlic press in the drawer with the scratched-up silverware that came with the apartment. And I tuck the envelope into my purse so it doesn’t wind up lost in the trash bags that contain my life. Once we get everything packed, Lainey and I give the whole place a cursory scrub. I know Mr. Benson will have it professionally cleaned after we leave (and take the money to pay for it out of our security deposit, if I had to guess), but it can’t hurt.

  When we’re all done and Barney is loaded, Lainey drives me to the little building at the front of the complex that holds the leasing office. There’s no one inside, so I take one of the forms from the plastic tray marked MOVE OUT. I slide my apartment key into the provided envelope, along with the one my mom left behind. I fill in Kris’s address in the space for a forwarding address, just in case there’s anything left of the security deposit. Then I drop the whole thing into the metal lockbox on the desk and turn to Lainey.

  “Welp, I don’t live here anymore,” I say. The apartment sucked, but it was home. “Let’s go to the beach.”

  The drive is silent, though it feels like my thoughts are shouting at me the whole way. I’m surprised Lainey doesn’t have to tell me to keep it down. By the time we get to Covina, I’m already drenched in sweat, and it’s only partly from the heat. I think Lainey can sense that I’m wound up, because she turns the music up loud and lets that be the reason we don’t talk.

  Lainey pays three dollars to park, and we only have to circle the sandy lot for a few minutes before we find a mother loading up a tantruming toddler into the back of an SUV. Lainey puts her signal on and waits.

  “So, are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She arches an eyebrow at me. “Okay, but just so you know, everything about you says, Lainey, I am feeling a lot of things, but fine definitely isn’t one of them.”

  I look over at her, still clutching the wheel as she studies me. I know that of all the people in the world, Lainey is the one to confide in. But right now, I just want to go lay on the beach and let the sun fry me into oblivion, maybe climb into the waves and let the push and pull of the tide distract me. And Ali. Thinking about his big dopey smile tugs just a little bit of the foulness out of my mood.

  “I’ll be fine,” I tell Lainey. “I just need to detach from all this for a while.”

  She shrugs. “Okay. Well, then let’s hope this Gwyneth Paltrow wannabe gets her organic offspring into that car seat soon before I sweat to death waiting for this parking spot.”

  It’s almost one o’clock, and the sun is high and bright in the summer sky by the time we trudge out onto the sand. We’re the last of the group to arrive. Ali and the soccer boys have already staked out a spot not far down the sand from the entrance, a giant rainbow umbrella marking their spread. When Lainey and I shuffle up with our bags, we see that the soccer girls have also joined in on beach day. Zoe Pike is laid out on a towel, her bleach-blond hair in a high ponytail, her barely-there black bikini complementing her glistening skin. Next to her is Gwen Wilson in a sporty red two-piece, who gives us a wave as we drop our bags into the sand.

  “Welcome, ladies!” she says, jumping up to give Lainey a hug. Gwen is awesome, one of those girls who are pretty and smart and popular and not an asshole. I’d hate her if she wasn’t so damn nice. “Make yourself at home, but mind the hacky sack.” She nods toward the boys standing in a circle playing some kind of full-contact hacky sack that has them sandy and red-faced, tackling one another with reckless abandon. I try not to stare at Ali, who’s pumping his arms in victory after taking down Colin Calloway. For the first time since discovering the envelope in my apartment—my old apartment—I feel a moment of happiness as a chill races through my body. A soccer player, Ali is lanky, but lean, his muscles outlined in sharp relief. He must feel my eyes on him, because his gaze sweeps across the sand and falls on me.

  “Hey, Ritzy!” he calls, giving me a wide grin and a wave. “Come play!”

  I have never in my life wanted to play hacky sack before. I don’t even know how you play hacky sack, other than flailing at that little fabric ball with your feet. But I�
�m willing to try anything if it means escaping this mood and getting closer to Ali. So I drop my beach bag in the sand next to Lainey, shed my shorts and T-shirt, and trot over to the boys. I catch Ali looking at me in my new suit before quickly darting his eyes away, and it warms me more than the afternoon sun.

  When I get to the circle of guys, I linger on the outside until Ali reaches out and grabs my hand, pulling me in next to him. “Just try to keep it from hitting the ground. You can use anything but your hands or arms, like soccer,” he says, flashing me a grin before lunging to catch the little knit bag on the top of his head, then flinging it across the circle to Waylon Roberts. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t still stuck on the warmth in my palm from when he pulled me into the circle. It feels like electric sparks are radiating up my arm and coming out of my ears. I’m so dumbstruck that I don’t notice the hacky sack flying toward me, where it connects with my chin, then lands on the sand with a muffled thump.

  The other guys dissolve into laughter, but Ali just smiles. “Okay, so you didn’t use your hands, which is good,” he says. He bends down to pick it up, and I let my eyes linger on his lean shoulders. “Try again?”

  I think I respond with something like “Umphyeah,” but I can’t be sure between the heat and the embarrassment over taking a hacky sack to the face. As Ali tosses it across the circle, I square my shoulders and prepare for the next attack. I will not embarrass myself this time. And so when the ball comes back to me, my left leg shoots out like a missile, and I launch it back at Waylon, this time beaning him in the face.

  “Ha! Nice shot,” Ali says, arm up for a high five. And so we continue, kicking and lunging and laughing, trading high fives and smiles that make it feel like something more than a hacky sack is flying between us. When I get temporarily blinded by a giant grin from Ali, I nearly miss an incoming sack. I lunge too late and wind up in a pile of arms and legs in the sand. Which turns out to be worth it when Ali bends down and offers me his hand. He pulls me up with a surprising amount of strength for such a lanky guy.

  I take a deep breath, breathing in the smell of burgers from a nearby grill, which mix with the salty air to send my stomach growling. Either it’s loud enough for Ali to hear, or he just smells the burgers, too, because he nods over toward the top of the beach. “Wanna grab a bite?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Lemme get my flip-flops.”

  I trudge back through the sand to where Lainey is now propped up on her elbows on a towel, paging through a giant workbook.

  “Did you do that problem set?” she asks, and when I turn, I see Ali coming up behind me.

  “Indubitably,” he replies.

  Lainey raises her eyebrows. “Well done, Mr. Anikhindi. Points to you.”

  “Though I’m struggling on the analogies. Perhaps I can check out your datum?”

  “Latin! Bonus!”

  Ali licks his finger and marks an invisible point on a scoreboard in the air. Meanwhile, I’m just standing there, wondering how I can get into this verbal ping-pong, considering I have no idea what they’re talking about.

  “Ali and I are in the same SAT prep class at the library,” Lainey explains as soon as she catches the look of confusion on my face.

  “Our teacher is this British guy who pretends we’re on a game show and gives us points every time we use an SAT word in conversation,” Ali adds. “He’s a total dork, but it’s kind of awesome.”

  “Yeah, says the guy with the photographic memory for vocabulary and a million points.”

  Ali shrugs, an impish grin on his face. “What can I say? I’m good with the lexicon.”

  Lainey sticks her tongue out at him, but Ali just laughs and starts toward the snack bar. “You coming?” he calls over his shoulder to me, and I have to jog to catch up. We walk back toward the boardwalk, where families are showering the salt and sand off before heading home. Just past the bathrooms is Wahoo’s, the beach snack bar. We get at the end of the line, which isn’t too long. Then we stand there in silence, me racking my brain, wishing I could capture the witty banter that he and Lainey had going on. Or, if nothing else, that someone would toss a hacky sack at my face.

  “So, is everything okay?”

  “What?” I ask, yanked out of my mental panic.

  “It’s just, you said you had a family emergency, so…” He trails off, and I realize he’s talking about our original date, just over a week ago.

  “Oh! Yeah. Yeah,” I say, trying to figure out how I’m going to fill him in. Lainey said to tell him the truth, but now, standing here in front of him, I just don’t think I can say the words. “My mom actually had to go away for a while, so I’m staying with, um, a family friend.” It has the virtue of being in the neighborhood of the truth, and Ali nods.

  “Cool. Glad to hear it. Hey, what do you want to eat? My treat.”

  “Oh, thanks. Um, hot dog with ketchup and a Coke.”

  “You got it.”

  I step aside so he can order, letting my thoughts wander, surprised that they amble toward Spencer. He’s nothing like Ali, who is so nice and cool. Everything doesn’t seem like a performance from him. I let myself imagine what might have happened if my mom hadn’t left, if I hadn’t been sent to live with Kris. Would we have had another date? Would we have kissed by now? Would he be my boyfriend? Would I be in that SAT class, too, laughing about our dopey professor and practicing ten-dollar words in conversation?

  Ali is back and handing over a hot dog in a little paper boat, a Coke already sweating in the summer sun in his other hand. We walk away from the counter to the railing of the boardwalk, where we balance our cups on the edge and dive into our food. As he reaches for a cheese fry, I notice a piece of green string tied around his wrist that I’ve never noticed before.

  “What’s that?” I ask, nodding toward his arm.

  He glances down. “Oh, my little sister tied it on me the other day. She told me to make a wish, and said when it falls off, the wish will come true.”

  “Ah,” I say, because my mom’s hippie friend Rose sold colored strings like that in her shop, usually with cheap little charms on them and some silly poem to go with them. “What did you wish for?”

  He pretends to be offended, sucking in a breath, his hand on his chest. “Well, I can’t tell you that,” he says, his eyes wide. “Then it won’t come true!”

  I laugh. It’s cute that he played along with his sister. But I do wonder what he wished for.

  “So have you started the summer reading yet?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Not yet.” And only partly because I’m not sure I’ll be at Southwest next year, which I don’t tell him.

  “Man’s Search for Meaning was pretty awesome, but Tess of the d’Urbervilles is putting me to sleep,” he says between bites. “I think I’m going to have to look at CliffsNotes or something. Lainey actually showed me this great site that she found that helps you understand the classics.”

  “Auntie M’s,” I reply. Lainey discovered it freshman year when we were trying to slog through The Scarlet Letter, which, I’m sorry, is basically a literary nap.

  “Yeah, and since it’s some lit teacher in Canada who created it, I don’t really feel guilty for looking.”

  I can’t put my finger on why, but I feel a case of the shitty kitties coming on, a phrase my mom used to use when she was feeling negative. I have no idea why I’m suddenly a shitty kitty. I’m standing here talking with my crush, who bought me lunch, which practically makes this a date. But it’s not a date. And somehow, he seems more excited to be talking about my best friend than he is to be talking with me.

  “So, hey, um, question,” Ali says, interrupting my spiral.

  “Yeah?”

  “Are things settled enough where you’re staying that maybe we could have that date?”

  And just like that, the shitty kitty goes into hiding. A grin spreads across my face.

  “Yeah, that would be great,” I reply.

  Ali meets my smile with one of his own.
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  “Awesome. I’ve gotta work the restaurant this week. My brother is off at basketball camp so I’m doing his shifts and mine, too. But how about Friday? I could pick you up around five?”

  It’s six days away, which is about five days too long, but I still accept happily.

  “Cool. I’ll plan something fun, okay?” Ali says.

  “Definitely,” I reply. “I’ll text you the address.”

  He wads up the paper from his hot dog and tosses it, free throw style, toward the trash can behind me. I turn to see it bank off the side and hit the ground. Ali looks sheepish, then hustles over to pick it up, dropping it into the trash can. He looks up and grabs for the green string on his wrist, giving it a tug until the knot unravels. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he just shrugs.

  “My wish came true.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  First thing Monday morning, I call the number on the pink slip of paper. There’s a harried-sounding woman on the other end of the line, and it takes me three tries before I catch that her name is Libby, she’s the hiring manager at the Island Club, and her day is completely screwed.

  “I’ve had three servers call out today, all claiming they’ve got mono, but I suspect they’re on their way to that EDM festival in Tallahassee. If they’re not bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and Visine’d first thing tomorrow, then they’re all fired.”

  “Actually, I think I can help,” I say when there’s a moment for me to break into her monologue. “I saw that you were hiring for the dining room?”

  But she barrels on as if she hasn’t heard me. I wonder if she even realizes she answered the phone.

  “You wouldn’t think it would be that hard to find people to work for twelve dollars an hour plus tips, but oh my god, I swear this kitchen has a revolving door on it. It’s like they’ll take the job, and then suddenly there’s a Renaissance Faire and I’m down two line cooks.”