Compromised (2 page)

F
inally, they take Dad.

They drive up early in the morning just as I'm leaving for school. It's not a regular police car with sirens and horns. It's a brown Buick. And the officers looked like insurance salesmen. A beige lady follows behind in her cardboard suit and soft-soled shoes.

“Tax evasion.”

“Embezzlement.”

“Fraud.”

Lots of other phrases fly through the air.

Dad hasn't shaved yet and wears a shirt that smells like yesterday. He drops his head as they cuff him. Then the lady comes to me and tells me to pack a bag. That's
when I hear “foster care.”

Foster care.

Dad speaks. He's probably saying something like “It'll be okay. I promise, baby. It'll be okay.”

But all I can hear is “foster care.”

The cardboard suit follows me upstairs. She has a tedious name—Beulah—and is a droopy woman with transparent skin—way vitamin D deficient. Clearly too many hours spent sitting under the glare of fluorescent eco-saver bulbs.

“I'm your caseworker,” she says.

“Can I have a sec?” I ask. She steps out of my room. I sit down and lay my head on my knees. My heart drums in my chest, my throat tightens, sweat trickles down my back.

Foster care.

It's as if those two words are being drilled into my skull.

I slow my breathing.

“You okay in there?” Beulah asks.

No.

My whole world has just crumbled to pieces.

My stomach is on fire.

I take another breath and a swig of Pepto-Bismol. I've
been sleeping with the stuff for a few weeks now—easier than getting up every couple of hours at night.

I revert to the scientific method. Anything can be explained and sorted by looking at it objectively. Take out the emotion, and things tend to make more sense.

I lick the chalky pink liquid off my lips and try to ignore the cramping in my stomach.

Purpose. I need a purpose.

“You okay?” Beulah hollers.

“Yep,” I manage. “Just need a minute.” And a purpose—a plan.

A plan. Order. There's a science to everything—even something as absurd-sounding as foster care.

My purpose: Get dad out of jail? Get out of foster care? I can't figure it out. Too many variables. I breathe in again.

Purpose: Get Dad and me back together again.

Okay. Not the most scientific of purposes. But it's a start. Step one.

I exhale.

Beulah clears her throat and raps on the door. “Maya? I need to come in now, okay?”

She probably thinks I'm gonna do something a
melodramatic pubescent fifteen-year-old normally does, like drink nail polish or something.

“Yeah. Come in,” I say, steadying my voice.

She peeks her head in the door. “We need to get going. You should pack some things.”

I grab my favorite jeans and sweater and pack them in a backpack and head toward the door.

“You might want more,” Beulah says, and clears her throat.

I shrug and throw more clothes in the pack until it bulges. Beulah leads me out to her car.

I turn back and see a man lock our front door and stick some paper up. There's already a sign on the lawn:
BANK OWNED PROPERTY
.

That didn't take long.

Beulah drives me to Kids Place—a “middle ground shelter,” as she calls it. We coast through the gate and park between small square houses painted yellow with white trim. A heavy woman with bread-kneading hands meets us on the walk. She takes my backpack and grips my hand in hers. “I'm Rose. Welcome.”

She strides ahead of us, her hips swaying back and forth. “Beulah's your social worker,” she turns to say, “and
I'm the one in charge here. We'll check you in and take you around so you can get more comfortable.”

Beulah and I follow Rose into a colorful office. Finger paintings are pasted on the walls and her bookshelves are covered in dioramas and toilet-paper-roll art projects. I sit next to Rose, across from Beulah.

Rose hands me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple.

“That's okay. I had breakfast.” I push them back. That burning feeling that started in my stomach spreads until it feels like all of my organs are on fire. Classic gastritis attack caused by stress. I hope they won't take away the Pepto-Bismol I packed. That's as much a staple in my diet as protein.

Rose smiles and says, “I'll leave you two for now,” and hands me an instruction manual. “Rules and Regulations of Kids Place.”

Beulah registers my bag and takes out the Pepto-Bismol. “No medication here.”

“But,” I start to say, and then think better of it. I have a bottle in my locker at school.

She hands me a pile of stiff clothes. “These are for you.”

“I have clothes.”

She purses her lips. “It's procedure.”

Procedure.

She has her scientific method, too, I guess.

“This isn't…,” She flips open a file that says
AMAYA SORENSON
and jots something down. “Amaya, this isn't going to be an overnight thing.”

AMAYA SORENSON
. I have a file. She puts my name and case number in her computer.

I clench my jaw and try to focus on the dinosaur dioramas—one of which is totally off since some kid put a Triassic dinosaur next to a Late Jurassic dinosaur, only the Triassic was extinct by then. Sloppy work.

Beulah's tapping on the keyboard brings me back to the room. “There,” she says. “Just need to get the basic information down. Your family doctor should be able to provide us with medical information we might need.”

We have no family doctor, I think. I've never actually been to a real doctor, except for emergency rooms.

I'm officially in “the system.”

“We're trying to contact family.” Beulah clears her throat. “Do you, um, know where your mother is?”

I nod. “Dead.”

 

When I came home from kindergarten, her lips were blue, her hands cold. I covered her with a blanket and waited for the doctors to come. Doctors are magicians. They had gotten her to come back before. I knew I just had to wait for them to turn Mama's blue lips pink.

Then we'd find a way to make her happy again. She wouldn't want to go away. I'd be a really good girl.

They drove up with flashing lights and a blaring siren. But the machines didn't work. Or the pumping. Or the fluids they shot through her body.

“Five minutes. If only we had gotten here five minutes ago,” I heard one of them say under his breath. Another one shook her head and pulled me away from Mama, covering her face with my soft pink sheet.

Five minutes doesn't sound like much. But five minutes is time enough to run through the big pile of raked leaves at the schoolyard three times, get a hair ribbon back from Jimmy Sanchez, sneak an Oreo from the cookie jar, or turn on the TV, the volume off, to see if the grown-up kissy shows are on.

Five minutes is a lifetime.

Dad ran through the door just as they were wheeling her into the back of the ambulance.

 

“Ahem.” Beulah swallows and blushes. “Dead mother” is always something that gets people squirming. They want to know how, when, why. A kind of morbid curiosity. Some things, I've learned, are okay.
She died of a terminal illness. She was in a car accident and slipped into a coma. She had a heart condition.
People like those explanations.

I usually say, “She had a neurotransmitter imbalance with deficiencies in seratonin and norepinephrine.” Most people don't know what I'm talking about and just figure it's some rare virus. Better that than telling someone that your mom downed a bottle of pills with a bottle of whiskey. That makes for some pretty awkward moments.

People don't “get” suicide. Who can blame them? It's against nature considering we're born with the instinct to strive for survival—it's our biological inheritance. Think concentration camps, famine, slavery, and the will to live all those people had. All animals are wired to strive to survive. Humans, though, are the only animals that commit suicide; it's like some people's survival instinct gets all tweaked.

Major evolutionary flaw.

Beulah gives me one of those horrible pity looks. One I don't need. I kind of figure if I'm over it, the rest of the
world can find a way to deal with it. She leans forward and a crease forms between her eyes. Her cardboard suit crumples at the armpits and hips.

“And, um, other relatives? That you know of?”

I shake my head. The branches on my family tree are pretty bare. Dad and I have spent every Thanksgiving and Christmas at Denny's or the local diner since Mom died. People think that's sad. But it's not. It's just our way—our tradition. And it's always been fine by me.

“When can I talk to my dad?” I ask, staring at the phone.

Beulah taps her pencil on the desk in a rat-a-tat-tat. “Right now”—she clears her throat—“right now your dad can't talk to anyone except for his lawyers.”

“Doesn't he get a phone call? Isn't that standard?”

“It's a pretty big federal investigation, and your dad has been put in isolation until things get weeded out. And—” She pauses.

“And they need to weed me out.”

She nods. “Something like that. But it won't take long.”

“Sure. Quick and fair trial.”

The point of her pencil snaps off during her last rat-a-tat-tat. “Maybe, um, you can get settled in. I should
have a clearer picture of what's happening later today or tomorrow.”

We leave the office and walk down the concrete path to one of the yellow houses. She opens the door and I gag on that industrial-clean smell. I look down the blindingly white hall. Colorful bulletin boards announce activities, birthdays, tutoring. I'd like to call somebody—anybody. But after two years in Reno, I haven't made one close friend. Unless you count Eileen Jones, my chemistry lab partner.

Eileen's not really a reliable lab partner. Last week, for example, she got sick and blacked out when we were testing the oxidative rancidity of food. I missed out on a cool lab because I spent the rest of class with her at the nurse's office. She brought me a thank-you card the next day.

Friendship has always been a waste of time since I never know when Dad and I will be leaving with new identities and lives. And I definitely didn't inherit Dad's attractive genetics. I sigh.

“This is your room and bunk. For now. Until we find appropriate placement.”

I freeze in the doorframe, then exhale and throw my stuff on the top bunk Beulah assigns me.

She clicks her pen in and out and clips some papers together. “Tomorrow things will look a little brighter.” Even Beulah's smile is cardboard.

It feels like I've swallowed a thousand cotton balls. It's never gotten this bad. Sure, there was the time we had to sneak out the bathroom window of our apartment, scramble down the fire escape, and leave town. But that was more like an adventure. Dad was with me. And we always made it. Together.

The last two years have been too good—like an NBC Family Channel sitcom without the token, politically correct minority character. I should've known it wouldn't last. The nice car, nicer house. Suburbia in all its glory. I remember driving up that first day, not believing what I was seeing. After years of apartments, trailer houses, and seedy motels, Dad drove up to American suburbia.

 

Our neighborhood looked like one of those model cities you see at science fairs. All the houses were that same Popsicle-stick color. Every yard followed regulation landscape rules with decorative rocks and desert plants. And an obligatory status SUV filled every driveway. American flags flapped in the wind.

At first I thought I'd get lost in all the sameness. Like if Dad dropped me off, stripped the house of its number and streets of their signs, I'd never find it. It could be a new reality show:
Suburban Survivor
.

You've got ten minutes to find your own home. Go!

We pulled up to a house that looked like every other house.

“What do you think?” Dad grinned. “I've got a great job now, honey. All those other things are behind us.”

I looked at Dad and back at the cream-colored house. I blinked. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. The next-door neighbor waved enthusiastically. “Hey there! Welcome to the neighborhood!”

I wasn't ever allowed to talk to our neighbors. Not in our old places, anyway. Dad was already waving. He winked at me and grinned.

“Why don't you go and pick out your room?”

I walked into the empty house that smelled like fresh paint and lemon wood polish. I sniffed. Not a trace of backed up sewers, urine, or greasy pizza. Almost too clean. The back windows faced mountains with blooming yellow sagebrush—not a dump or a back alley. Open Nevada-desert space.

“Come on. Let's check out the house.”

The narrow entryway opened up to one of those great rooms, combining the living room, family room, dining room, and kitchen. In the back, a narrow staircase led upstairs.

We walked up. I chose the first room on the left, with a view of the mountains. “How are we going to fill all the space?” I asked.

Dad flashed his smile. “I guess we'd better go shopping.”

 

I believed him. The human mind is funny like that because even if we stack up the evidence that shows life will go a certain way, we ignore the evidence and “believe”—deceiving ourselves. But I fell for it—that sense of normal. How stupid.

 

“We've already called your school. They know you won't be coming in today.”

I hold my stomach and think about the half-full pink bottle stuck in my locker. “I can go. I don't mind.”

Beulah pats my shoulder. “You're a great student. One day won't interfere with your school performance.”