Forevermore (2 page)

Until I got to use Caleb’s, I’d never really played video games before. My mom didn’t have the money and no foster parent had a gaming console. “I’m not really sure.”

He leaned down. “You’re not a gamer?”

He looked concerned. Maybe I should lie. I needed this money, but I shouldn’t lie. Not if it would hurt Willa’s company. “No, sir.”

“Kevin,” he insisted as a wide grin came over his face. “You’ll be perfect for this. We never get beginners testing games. Willa!”

Willa appeared a few seconds later. “You bellowed?”

“Whose kid is this doll?” His thumb hooked toward me, and I felt my stomach clench. “You need to give them a raise for finding us a virgin gamer.”

“Kev!” Willa scolded. Her tone made me jump in my seat. Uh-oh, he was in trouble. “Vocabulary.”

“Oh, shh—um, shoot, right. Yeah, okay, can do. Sorry, Olivia, I wasn’t thinking.”

I wish they’d stop talking and just let me get to work. They didn’t need to worry about me. He could say whatever he wanted. I’d heard a lot worse in the homes I’d lived in. M and Briony’s was the first house that had a no-swearing rule. It was easy for me, but Briony sometimes let a word slip. She had to pay a dollar into the swear jar when she did. Caleb said we’d get to go to Six Flags when it had enough money in it.

“Whose kid is she?” he asked Willa.

I wanted to crawl under the desk. I hated this question. I didn’t like talking about not having a mom anymore. Why couldn’t people understand that?

Before Willa answered, the elevator dinged and two of the meanest girls in my class stepped off. Now I really wanted to disappear. Of all the girls in school to be here, it had to be these two. My heart sank, taking most of my excitement down with it.

2 / OLIVIA

“HEY, WILLA,” KRYSTAL BEAMED
at her.

“Yeah, like, hi,” Kortney tried to match Krystal’s enthusiasm.

“Hi, ladies,” Willa greeted them. “We’re just getting started. Do you know Olivia?”

Both girls turned to look at me. Kortney sighed but Krystal groaned until she saw that Willa was watching her. “Yeah, sure, she’s in our class.”

Willa squinted at her for a second. “Good, then you should all have fun today. Why don’t you head back and say hi to your dads.” She watched them go before turning back to me. “Are you all friends?”

No. But I didn’t say that. Adults didn’t like to hear that kids weren’t friends with everyone in their class. It made them think something was wrong with you. “Um,” I started.

“Let me put it this way,” Willa cut in as her dark eyes drilled into mine. “Do you have a problem working with them?”

“No,” I blurted. I wouldn’t have a problem, but they might.

“Because if you do, I can ask them to leave.”

She’d ask them to leave? Even though they had dads who worked here and I didn’t? “No, it’s okay.”

She stared at me for a bit longer. She was like M that way. They could both read expressions. “All right then. Kev, get Olivia started and work with the girls when they get back. Caleb and some friends plus Mike’s son will be here in a couple hours.”

Kevin came back over and told me to open up a blank document for notes on the things I found wrong. I started the game and went to the help menu to learn how to play it. That was when the other girls came back. Kevin gave them the same instructions then let them start. He watched us for a while before he came over to help me with all the different controls.

The girls giggled from the other end of the room. I knew they were laughing about me, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t let it bother me. Girls had been laughing at me since my mom died, about my clothes, about the houses I lived in, about my grades, about a lot of things. I used to get really upset, but it never helped anything.

Two hours later, I was still working through the first level while the other girls had made it to level four. It sucked that they were ahead of me, but it took me a long time to read through the instructions, menus, and screens. I wasn’t so good at reading.

When Kevin left us to make a call in his office, Krystal said, “He’s cute.”

“Supe cute,” Kortney said back. She never had an original thought. She always just agreed with Krystal.

“Don’t know why he’s wasting time on the freak,” Krystal went on.

I thought they’d forgotten about me. Hoped they had. I hated when they did this. They picked on so many kids in our class, but I was their favorite because I never talked back. I tried to ignore them, but sometimes it made them pick on me more.

“She’s stupid, that’s why,” Kortney told her.

“She’s a retard, more like,” Krystal said.

I flinched. That word, I hated it. Mom always told me not to hate things, but I’d heard that word used around me before. Last year, they tried to hold me back at school. It was the reason my last set of foster parents sent me back to the group home. If I’d stayed in that school district, I probably would have been held back. That was one nice thing about jumping foster homes. A new district meant new records and teachers and time to convince everyone I wasn’t dumb. Briony and M didn’t think I was. They helped me with homework, explained things so I could understand them, and treated me like I was as smart as everyone else in my class, even if I wasn’t. Whenever I got frustrated, M tried to convince me that smart had a lot of sides to it. Sometimes I believed her, but it was hard when Krystal and her flock started making fun.

“Supe retard,” Kortney agreed.

“Yeah, like, ‘member when Mrs. Lomax asked her to read out loud last week? It took her, like, all day to read one paragraph.”

“Forevs,” Kortney said.

I could feel tears starting and that embarrassed me more. I wasn’t good at reading out loud either. Even worse than when I read to myself. M helped me practice, but I’d probably never be good at it. I didn’t feel stupid, but Krystal and her friends could change my mind about that.

“Do you need help reading the game, freak?” Krystal called out. “Do you even know the whole alphabet?”

I looked over to the receptionist. Thankfully she was on the phone. I didn’t want her to hear what they were saying.

“Are you deaf and a retard?” Krystal asked.

I continued to ignore them. Saying anything would only make them continue. Their attention spans were shorter than their miniskirts. They usually moved on quickly.

Willa came into the reception area. “How’s it going, ladies?”

They made a big show of saying how much they loved it and couldn’t believe they were getting paid. I took the opportunity to escape to the bathroom while they were falling all over Willa. It was nice to get away from their constant chatter.

A few minutes later, I headed back to my workspace. Willa was talking to the girls out in reception. “Really? Because I think calling someone a freak and a retard is cruel and offensive.”

I stopped in the hallway. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but as a foster kid, it was how I kept from being surprised all the time.

“We were kidding around, Willa, come on,” Krystal said.

“You might be able to fool your parents with your innocent act, but I know if I called you those things, you wouldn’t think I was kidding. Your feelings would be hurt.”

“She can’t even read!” Krystal protested. “She’s, like, super dumb.”

“That’s it,” Willa said in a chilling voice. “I’m not going to treat either of you like you’re too young to know the difference. I know you understand that what you said was hurtful, and still you said it. That’s not just a mean thing to say. It’s a mean thing to do. I don’t like mean girls.”

“We’re not mean,” Kortney screeched. “We’re the most popular girls in school.”

“Popularity has nothing to do with being nice. You guys are done here.”

“No, we’re not,” Krystal talked back. “We’re only on level four, and it’s the first day.”

“I don’t hire mean girls,” Willa told them.

“Yeah, but, but,” Kortney stuttered.

“Come on, Kort. Dad will do something about this,” Krystal said in that annoying know-it-all voice she had. “I thought you were cool, Willa.”

“Krystal, look at me,” Willa paused and waited for Krystal to follow her order. “Your dad works for me. I pay his salary. If you want to whine to him about this, he’s going to hear what I have to say and he’ll believe me. If you don’t want that to happen, head on back and tell him you’re bored and don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Whatevs!” Krystal said.

I backtracked to the bathroom, sick to my stomach that Willa had to hear that the girls in my class thought I was dumb. I didn’t want her to have to deal with them. Maybe I could get their jobs back. It was going to be awful going back out there. Willa was going to lie to make me believe that they left on their own. Adults usually tried to soften things for kids.

The bathroom door opened to show Willa’s face. “Liv, come to my office for a sec.”

I followed her back to her office and heard the girls pass behind us with their dads. At least I wouldn’t be in the reception area when they left. It sounded like they were giving them the “bored” story. I didn’t blame them. I’d barf up my lunch if Briony or M heard something bad about me from Willa.

Willa tried to look happy, but I could tell she wasn’t. Like the time her friend Des kept asking me about my mom in front of all of their friends. That was so embarrassing. M got me out of there, but not before I saw Willa’s face go red and her eyes glare at Des.

I waited for her lie. I guess I should be thankful that there were adults in my life that would think a lie would be better than the truth if it hurt, but I didn’t like lies.

“If someone is purposefully mean to you, you can call them on it, you know?”

I looked up from my lap. She wasn’t sugarcoating it for me?

“I try not to sink to their level, but I call them on it.” She looked at me, but I didn’t know what to say. “I guess that might not always work with kids, though, right?” She waited for my nod. “And I might have just made things worse for you at school, too, huh?”

I couldn’t nod at that one. She meant well, but she just made sure I’d be cornered at school tomorrow. It was pretty cool that Willa took my side, though.

“Well, crap.” Willa sat back, thinking.

“It’s fine,” I tried to reassure her.

“It’s not, but I couldn’t let those little brats stay here. Krystal’s been driving me nuts for two years ever since I hired her dad.”

I laughed. Adults never spoke this way around me.

“Hey, what’s going on in here?” Caleb showed up in the doorway wearing his trademark big smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“Is someone speaking, Liv?” Willa asked me, not even looking at Caleb. “I distinctly remember saying that I don’t talk to thirteen-year-olds who are taller than I am.”

I giggled at Willa’s comment. They were always kidding each other.

“Aww, Willa, you love talking to me,” he replied easily.

“Correction, I used to love talking to you until you outgrew me, punk!”

“I can still hear you from up here,” he taunted, coming over to stand next to her. He was barely half an inch taller than Willa at a few inches over five feet. He had big feet, though, so he was probably going to grow a lot more. “Come on, Livy, Hank and Terrence are out front. Show us what you’ve been doing so we can start earning some bucks.”

I never minded when Caleb or Briony called me Livy, just when everyone else did. They let me live with them, so they could call me anything they wanted. Plus they meant it affectionately not like they thought I was still a baby.

I smiled at Willa and headed back out with Caleb. He and Hank were always really nice to me. He didn’t seem to mind that I was more than a year younger and a girl. He treated me like a brother would. It made me feel good to be around him. It would take my mind off of having to deal with the mean girls tomorrow.

M / 3

The student stared at me with eyes pleading, but they lacked sincerity. Oh, he wanted his grade changed. That was sincere enough, but his ask didn’t have the conviction of someone who understood he’d screwed up and needed a pass. He just wanted me to change his grade without having done anything to fix his case study. He thought by scheduling the appointment and coming in to see me that I would do as he asked. Some professors did that. They didn’t like denying the request or didn’t want to do the extra work to help the student get a better grade. I wasn’t like that.

My eyes shifted to check that my office door was still open. I usually conducted these types of appointments in my classroom, but it was in use and he didn’t want to wait. They never wanted to wait when their GPA was on the line. He was graduating at the end of the term, and this paper’s C was threatening to bring his current A in the class down to a B+, which didn’t sit well with him. I rolled my chair a foot closer to the door. He wasn’t crowding me. I set up the chairs in my office specifically to keep students from crowding me, but he was pretty eager about me changing his grade.

“See what I did here?” His finger pointed to an aesthetically pleasing section in the paper. He formatted his papers exactly how I liked them, but he’d dropped the ball on content this time. “I posited that the belt speed kept the line from maximum efficiency. I bet no one else did that, Prof.”

Everyone else had done that. It was an operations management class. Factory output was always the first item analyzed. “It isn’t enough to state the theory. You need to prove it. You should have noted the actual speed. Then if it was increased by X amount, it would have resulted in an increase in X number of units each day.”

“But,” he sighed and couldn’t come up with another argument, much like his lacking paper.

“You had a project due in another class and slapped this together at the last second because you can write these things in your sleep, right?” I guessed.

He shrugged. It was funny how college age men could become exactly like my teenage stepson when called on their crap.

“It’s easy to let things slide in the home stretch, especially when you know a certain subject comes easy to you.” I tried not to let my tone slip into lecture mode. “Your conclusions are all correct, but you don’t have any analysis or proof to back them up.”