Strays Like Us Read online

  “The wash?”

  She shrugged. “They were a little grungy-looking. I went through them when you were outside. I was going to put them in your dresser drawers, but then I changed my mind and decided to wash them first. I should have asked you, though. I apologize.”

  “It’s okay.” I could feel my cheeks getting hot again and I tried to push down my annoyance. It was bad enough that I’d had to take hand-me-downs from some closet at the Children and Youth Services building because there hadn’t been time for me to go home and pack, but now I had to deal with Margery deciding to do whatever she wanted with them. Where was my say in any of this? Why did adults always just assume that they knew better? “It’s just … I don’t have anything else.”

  “Hold on a second.” I stood there, watching the tub fill as Margery swept past me. I could see the dog from the bathroom window. He’d settled down finally and was lying in the dirt, licking the wound on his leg.

  Margery reappeared, a gigantic purple fuzzy bathrobe draped over one arm. “It’s mine,” she said, hanging it on a hook inside the door. “So it’ll be a little big. But just pull it tight and double-knot the belt so it won’t fall off. You can wear it until your clothes are done.”

  Two barks sounded outside the window, but without the frantic edge from before. Now they just sounded lonely. And tired.

  “Does that dog even have a name?” I asked.

  “Toby, I think.” Margery gave me a look that said the topic was closed.

  And before I could say another word, she walked out of the bathroom and shut the door.

  I got the worst part over first, washing my hair twice and then dumping on a big blob of conditioner. I ran my fingers through it, loosening all the knots, and then piled it on top of my head. It smelled like coconut and green grass, and I leaned back, resting my arms along the bath’s ceramic edge. The tub was big enough that even with my legs stretched all the way out, there was still room left over. It was so clean that the sides of it gleamed. No rust. No mildew. The woodsy scent of the lavender bubble bath hung in the air, and the late-afternoon light filtered through the curtains. It was like heaven, being in there. Like heaven and then some.

  But it didn’t last. Especially when I thought about Mom. I knew that the possibility of her enjoying a bath like this was nonexistent. What was she doing just now? What was she thinking?

  I drifted back to the day before, trying to connect the dots. What had I missed? Was there anything that might have hinted at all the trouble that had unfolded today? Mom had been a little antsy last night, but that wasn’t anything new. She was always a little irritable after work, mostly because her boss at the pharmacy, a short, mean man named Mr. McCormick, made her do jobs that no one else wanted to do, like stock the laxative shelves and dust the walls behind the soda machines, where gigantic, floaty cobwebs lived. She was always tired at the end of her shift. Tired and worn-out and sometimes even a little bit teary.

  Last night, though, she was just edgy. I was sitting on the couch in the living room, wrapped in my comforter, trying to finish the first chapter of A Wrinkle in Time. It was hard to concentrate because it was so cold in the apartment, and while my body was warm, the tips of my nose and fingers were like ice. Mom had said we’d get the heat turned back on along with the water after she got paid on Friday, but right then, it was hard to think about anything else.

  I was just starting chapter two when she came out of the bedroom and wandered into the kitchen. Her hair hung loosely around her shoulders, and she’d pulled on a pair of fuzzy socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt. I looked up from my book as she started opening and shutting the cupboard doors. I could feel my Mom radar flicking on, my uh-oh antennae snapping to attention. “What do you need?” I called from the couch. “Did you lose something?”

  “No, no.” She opened the refrigerator and stared inside, her hand on the door. I could see the veins running along the inside of her arm. They stuck out like little green caterpillars from her wrist all the way up to her elbow. She was getting too skinny again.

  “Are you hungry?” I dog-eared the page in my book and got up from the couch. “You want me to make you another grilled cheese?”

  She closed the refrigerator and looked at me. Her eyes were glassy, and for a minute, I wondered if she’d taken the wrong pill. Mom took lots of pills, the slim orange bottles lined up beside her bed like a row of soldiers. Some of them helped her sleep, others made her relax, and still others gave her a little extra boost when she needed it. It wasn’t a big deal, she’d told me; everyone needed something to get through the day, and anyone who said they didn’t was lying. She was right, too. My English teacher always had a cup of coffee in her hand. And every morning, when Mom turned the corner to head into work, I knew her friend Gwyneth waited for her outside the Rite Aid, smoking a cigarette. So Mom needed a pill or two. As long as she kept on being Mom, I was okay with that.

  “Mom?” I went over and rubbed her arm. “What’s wrong?” I nodded toward the pile of blankets in the living room. “You want to get under the covers?” She shook her head and leaned into me. I stroked her hair as she began to cry. “Mom, what is it?” I didn’t like it when she cried. It made me nervous.

  “I just wish it wasn’t like this,” she said.

  “Like what?” I steered her slowly toward the couch. “Everything’s fine.”

  “No, it’s not.” Her voice cracked. “We don’t have any heat or water, there’s hardly any food in the kitchen, and I’m just …” She shook her head. “I’m just not cutting it here, Fred. You deserve so much better.”

  “Shhhh …” I tilted her head against my shoulder and rubbed her arm. She got this way sometimes, sinking down in the dumps about everything that was going wrong instead of focusing on the things that were going right. I knew what to do because I’d done it a hundred times. “Everything’s fine, Mom. It really is. Let’s look at it one step at a time, okay?” I ticked the points off on my fingers. “You’re getting paid in a few days, which means we’ll have heat again. And water. We had grilled cheeses for dinner, which”—I nudged her in the side—“were pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. Even if I did burn the back of mine. And we have each other.”

  Mom took my hand in hers. “We do, don’t we?” she murmured.

  “We do.” I nodded, running my fingertips up and down the top of her hand. “Which is more important than all the rest of it anyway.”

  “You’re right.” She took a deep breath and then let it out again. “Oh, Fred, what would I do without you?”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” I said, squeezing her hand. “Because we’ll never have to find out.”

  Until we did.

  Today.

  One minute I was in Mr. Poole’s third-period science class, and the next minute I was sitting in an office at Children and Youth Services, waiting for Carmella to tell me what had happened to Mom. For some reason, it hadn’t hit me yet how serious everything was; I actually thought I was going to be able to go back to school, and maybe even squeak my way into the last round of Science Jeopardy, for which I’d been studying for weeks. Right up until everything happened, Science Jeopardy was kind of the most exciting thing going on in my life. Mostly because I was good at science. And because I knew I could win Science Jeopardy, which Mr. Poole held at the start of every new marking period.

  Carmella had a poster on her wall that said LIFE IS TOUGH, BUT SO ARE YOU! in thick, multicolored letters, and a plant with long, snakelike leaves hanging down the front of the desk. It reminded me of one of the questions Mr. Poole had asked during the first round of Science Jeopardy, and the only one—in all four rounds—that I had gotten wrong. The question was, which tissue carries sugary sap around a plant? The answer is phloem, which is pronounced FLO-em, and which I will probably never in this lifetime ever forget again. But at that moment, my brain went totally blank. Now all I could think, staring at those weird plant tendrils on Mrs. Rivers’s desk, was the word “phlo
em.” Phloem. Phloem.

  That is, until Carmella started typing on her laptop. “Hey,” I said. “You were going to tell me where my mom is when we got here. Well, we’re here.”

  Carmella glanced up at me. Her brown hair looked like a Brillo pad, and she had dark, bushy eyebrows. “Right now, she’s at the police station,” she said quietly.

  Something lurched inside my chest. “The police station? Why?”

  “We’re still not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?” I squeezed my fists. “You’ve gotta know something!”

  “We’re still waiting to hear the rest of the story. All I know right now, honey, is that there was an incident at Rite Aid.”

  “Don’t call me honey.” I spoke through gritted teeth. “And why do you keep using the word ‘incident’? What happened?”

  “We don’t know the details yet.” She looked at me hopefully as the phone rang. “Hold on. This might give us some more information.”

  I held my breath as she picked up the phone. “Carmella speaking.” She held my eyes as someone spoke to her on the other end, and then nodded, indicating that the person was talking about Mom. “Yes, okay. Go ahead.” I held my breath. Bit my lower lip.

  After another moment, Carmella dropped her eyes. A muscle pulsed in her jaw as she drew her index finger along the edge of her desk. My heart sank. It wasn’t going to be good, whatever it was. I pressed my sneakers to the floor as hard as I could and dug my thumbnail into my palm.

  “Okay.” Carmella sighed heavily and scribbled something on a yellow pad next to her laptop. “All right. Yes. Okay. Last name again? Uh-huh. Okay, then. Thanks, Sherry.”

  She put the phone back in the hook and raised her eyes again.

  “What?” I asked.

  Carmella’s voice was somber. “We’re not sure what the full extent of charges are yet, but it does look as though your mother is going to jail for a little while.”

  “Jail?” I shot up, as if something from above had yanked me to my feet. “What do you mean, jail?”

  “I know you’re upset.” Carmella held her hands out as if I might lunge across the desk. “But please—”

  “Why are they sending her to jail?” My voice was shaking. It was too loud, but I didn’t care. “What did she do? What’s going to happen?”

  “The police found some pills on her. That she’d stolen. From the Rite Aid.”

  “No, no, no!” I shook my head back and forth. “Those are her pills! She always has them! She takes them for anxiety and pain and stuff. They thought she stole them? From the store?”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Well, they’re wrong!” I sat back down. “They’re totally, one hundred million percent wrong! My mom would never do something like that. I bet that stupid manager of hers …” I stood back up. “I want to go down and talk to them. To any of them. I’ll let them know. I’ll tell them …”

  “Oh, honey, it doesn’t work that way.” Carmella shook her head. “You’ve got to leave it up to them now. They’ll sort everything out.”

  “Sort what out?” I was breathing hard now, my brain racing. “She didn’t do anything!” For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming, if I’d wake up suddenly in my bed at the apartment, shaking and breathless, realizing I’d imagined it all. But that didn’t happen.

  And before I could say anything else, Carmella took my hand. “We have someone coming for you, honey. To take care of you for a while. Her name is Margery Dawson. She’s a first-time foster parent, so I think she’s just as nervous about the situation as you might be. But she’s a wonderful woman. She lives in Lancaster, which is about eighty miles from here, so it’ll be a big change from the city, and she …”

  She went on and on, but I’d stopped listening.

  I wasn’t even sure I was still breathing.

  Just like that, my life had turned upside down and inside out. And now here I was, soaking in a forty-gallon bathtub while Mom was sitting in a jail cell all by herself.

  I slid under the water, holding my breath and squeezing my eyes shut.

  It was the only thing I could do to keep the tears from coming.

  “Not bad.” Margery flicked her eyes at me as I appeared in the kitchen, dressed in her robe. She was taking a tin of muffins out of the oven. They were a golden-yellow color, with slightly brown tops. “It fits you better than I would’ve thought.”

  I shoved the sleeves up along my arms and sat down. I wasn’t sure what kind of eyesight Margery had, but I was drowning in her dumb robe. The hem dragged on the floor, and I’d had to wrap the belt twice around my waist just to keep it up. Still, it was soft. And even though my hair was wet and dripped down my back, I was warm and dry.

  Margery set a plate and the muffin tin down on the table in front of me. She held up a butter knife and tossed another dish towel over one shoulder. “Watch me first.” She ran the knife around the edges of one of the muffins and then slid it out. “Just like that, okay?” She put the muffin on the plate and handed me the knife. “Think you can do it?”

  I nodded and stood, shoving up the sleeves of the robe. It was harder than it looked. The first two muffins split and broke in half as I tried to take them out of the tin, and the third one only came halfway out. I did okay with the rest of them, and I shoved the broken ones in the middle of the platter, squishing them in tight so that Margery wouldn’t notice. They were the size of baseballs, and they smelled a little like Rice Krispies Treats.

  Margery glanced over at the finished plate and nodded. “Nice work. You mind setting the table now?” She opened a cupboard above the counter. “The dishes are up there. We’re having beef stew, so we need big bowls. And maybe a few of the smaller plates for the corn muffins. There’s napkins in the drawer and a salt-and-pepper set above it.”

  I set everything out slowly, marveling at the beautiful cream-colored plates with scalloped edges, the heavy silverware, and the cloth napkins. Mom and I mostly just ate off paper plates. Sometimes we had squares of paper towel for napkins, but if I’d forgotten to buy it, we didn’t use anything at all.

  “All right!” Margery brought over a deep-blue bowl filled with chunks of beef and carrot and potato. She ladled it into my bowl, adding extra gravy and carrots on top, and then filled her own. “Beef stew is one of my favorites.” She sat down and spread a napkin on her lap. “I hope you like it.”

  I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I took the first bite. Then I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop. I ended up wolfing down two and half bowls of the stew and two corn muffins as Margery watched. Every so often she would nod or smile, but she didn’t say anything and neither did I. Behind us, the fire spit and crackled, and when I finally sat back and took a long, deep breath, I realized it might have been the first one I’d taken all day.

  After her second corn muffin, Margery sat back in her chair, too. She wiped her mouth and placed her napkin on the table next to her plate. “So. How’re you doing, Fred?”

  I turned my head and glared at her.

  “I mean …” Margery gestured with her hands. “You know, all things considered.”

  I shrugged. What did she expect me to say? That things were great? That my mother was in jail and I didn’t know when she’d get out, let alone when I’d see her again, but now that I had taken a bath and eaten a bowl of beef stew, everything was just fine and dandy?

  Margery cleared her throat. She took a sip from her tea and placed the mug back down, wrapping her hands around the outside of it. “I guess that was a dumb question.” She inhaled deeply and blew it back out. “Let me start over. Are you tired?”

  I shook my head, but that wasn’t true. I was exhausted. And yet, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to sleep again.

  Margery nodded, as if she’d expected me to say no. “We should probably talk about a curfew, then.”

  I looked up. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I know.” Margery shrugged. “But you
know, for lights-out. Bedtime and all that. What do you do at home? What time do you go to sleep?”

  I shrugged. “Whenever.”

  “You don’t have a curfew?”

  “Not really.” Mom was usually asleep for hours before I crawled into bed, and I just fell asleep when I was tired, not when the numbers on a clock said it was time to close my eyes.

  “Okay, well, maybe while you’re here, we’ll agree on a bedtime.” Margery threaded a long braid of hair through her fingers as she spoke. “Especially on school nights. How about nine o’clock?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m twelve years old, not five.”

  “Nine thirty?”

  “Ten thirty.”

  Margery shook her head. “Too late. You’ll have to be up by six every morning to catch the bus here. How about ten?”

  I was up at six every morning back home, no matter what time I fell asleep, not because I wanted to, or even because I needed to, but because that was when Mom got up. She tried to be quiet, but the fold-up bed across the room always squeaked when she doubled it back up, and whenever I heard it, my eyes flew open. She would tiptoe over and kiss me on the forehead and tell me to go back to sleep, but I never did. I’d just lie there and listen as she moved around the apartment, making coffee, brushing her teeth, opening and closing the kitchen cupboards. It was odd, I guess, but hearing those little noises always made me feel as though everything was okay. It was when the sounds stopped that I worried.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “Ten.”

  “Good.” Margery nodded. “That wasn’t too bad. How about breakfast? Is there anything you won’t eat? Can’t eat? Eggs, maybe?”

  “I hardly ever eat in the morning.”

  “How come?”

  I shrugged. “Not hungry.”

  Margery paused, and for a split second, I thought she could tell I was lying. I braced myself for another back-and-forth, but it didn’t come. “How about if you were?” she asked instead. “What if you woke up tomorrow morning and you were absolutely starving? What would you want to eat if you could eat anything?”