Getting Somewhere (2 page)

Lauren is relieved to have Ellie's attention diverted. Besides, it gives her a chance to study the woman's profile. Lauren thinks she is fairly pretty for someone her age, which she guesses to be about midthirties. Her hair, especially, is very nice, thick and healthy. Lauren bets those blonde highlights are natural, too. No Clairol color for this one. Good bone structure, her eyes widely set but not too wide. Lauren hates it when people's eyes are too close together. With a little mascara and some dark blue eye-shadow to complement the deep parts of her iris, she could actually be quite attractive.

Lauren mentally reviews the items in her makeup bag, categorizes the contents by the stores they were lifted from. The NatureGirl medium-to-tan foundation from Cissy's at the mall. The Revlon Pinch Me gel blush from Walgreens. She's not sure about the Nicole Miller Maximum Volume mascara because she goes through those pretty fast and is always needing more. Her favorites are the pencils, the ones for eyeliner and shadow. She thinks the last one she got was the Almay Bright Eyes, with the different shades on each end. She had to get that at Newman's because they are the only ones who stock it. The department stores are the hardest because there is often a clerk at the cosmetics counter, or even sometimes a video camera, though a lot of those are fake, but they have the best brands. If she wasn't picky, she could just get everything she needs from any decent drug store cosmetics aisle, but there isn't much fun in that.

Lauren is an expert at eating without eating. She does a lot of spreading, a lot of chewing, makes the motions in a convincing way but not so much as to draw attention to herself. She has fed whole meals to the dog before without anyone noticing, but that was too easy, too common, back when not eating seemed much harder and back when she still ate meals once in a while with her family. Now eating is the hard thing, trying to develop an appetite for anything at all. She loves the feeling of hunger, treasures it like a special drug, a pill that makes her feel powerful and uncontaminated and righteous. She doesn't want to die. She has seen pictures of girls with shrunken chests, fur growing on their arms and legs, a look of starvation in their eyes. That isn't her, never will be. She's not the starving type. She thinks of herself as the surviving type, tough, able to make things work out the way she wants them to. A model. Or an actress. Anything she wants.

Okay, so, yeah. This is a little glitch in her plans. But she's not going to stay. Absolutely no way. She'll just tell them she's not happy, that it isn't working out for her. The room where they put her is ridiculous. Tiny. No television, no phone. Geez, they even had those at detention. Well, not in the rooms, but still. She can tell already that this Ellie is a pushover. Hell, if she has to, she'll just walk out. Nothing to stop her. Find a phone, call Jason. It will be fine. It always is.

L
AUREN'S NOT ALONE
in pushing her food around. Jenna notices that the only one eating with any enthusiasm is Grace, who has laid the book she was reading on her lap, the corner of a paper napkin peeking out of the top as a bookmark.

Grace seems to be in a hurry to finish, doesn't look around the table or meet anyone else's eyes. Jenna feels both miffed and intrigued, her highly developed radar system for once coming up a bit scrambled. She is picturing the scene at the bus, trying to square that with what is happening now. Is Grace even a part of this thing, this program? They seemed pissed that she wasn't right there to greet the bus. Ellie calls herself the “director” and yet Grace has some aura, something Jenna can't put her finger on, that actually makes her seem like the one in charge.

Ellie and Donna can simply be placed into the category of do-gooders, a type with which Jenna is quite familiar and for which she has no patience, and that includes therapists, nosy teachers, and the always-naive foster parents. Grace, on the other hand, will require further attention. Jenna's instinct is to be wary, but she suspects that the woman is ignoring them because she would just rather not have them here at all. Jenna has plenty of experience with that as well.

Jenna is jolted from her thoughts when she hears her name from the other end of the table. Ellie is smiling at her, her eyebrows raised with a hopeful though somewhat surprised look on her face, as if she is just as startled as Jenna by the sound of her own voice.

“I was just asking how you like your room,” Ellie says.

Jenna frowns, shrugs. What difference does it make?

“Was that your room, Grace? Isn't the one Jenna's in where you slept as a child?”

Jenna can almost feel Grace stiffen beside her. When she steals a glance, Grace's lips are struggling toward a strained smile but her eyes are hard. She stares at Ellie for a second or two and then turns to Jenna. “Are you in the one closest to the bathroom? First on the right?”

Jenna nods.

Grace looks back to Ellie. “Yep. That's the one.”

For some reason, Ellie appears inordinately relieved, then seems to realize that she still has everyone's attention and clears her voice as if preparing to address an important gathering. “You know,” Ellie says, sounding almost apologetic, “this is a hard time.”

Jenna feels like she can hear the tiny breaths taken around the table, notices she is holding her own.

Ellie continues. “None of us knows each other yet, we don't have any idea what to expect, especially you guys.” She glances around the table.

“It might be pretty uncomfortable for awhile. We value you as guests in our home and everything that suggests in the way of mutual sharing and respect. This is our story—the food we eat, the care we take in growing it and preparing it, and the sharing of it—and we want to welcome you to tell your stories, to help us understand who you really are.”

She pauses, looks down at the fork resting on a small pile of white rice on her plate.

“Maybe the formality of this meal doesn't seem like it helps us relax, but the reasons we choose to do it this way say a lot about what we're hoping you might get out of being here.”

Jenna has to admit that she's never heard this one before. Everybody is always trying to get her to spill her guts, and maybe this is just another way, a sneakier way, of making that happen. She is a little curious in spite of herself. She actually wants to know the reason why everything is so formal, so nice, how they decided to use china dishes and put ice in the water glasses and serve what she imagines is gourmet food when what she expects, what she is used to, is having to microwave hotdogs for herself and the younger kids, steal cookies from the foster's private stash when she's hungry, feeling like any bite she puts in her mouth is held against her. But Ellie is still talking, saying something more about stories, going on and on.

Jenna is watching her now out of the corner of her eye. She needs to see what Ellie's face looks like when she says these words. Jenna hears something about home and family, some stuff about how important each girl is and how they each have something to contribute, how valuable they are as people even if society has already labeled them, how it's okay to make mistakes. It's completely overwhelming, and to Jenna, Ellie's voice sounds almost desperate as if she has these elaborate plans, these big ideas, yet secretly knows that none of this is actually going to work.

And then her mind is wandering back to the bus ride, groping for the exact moment when she last held her book—a worn, tattered copy of
The Bean Trees
, stolen from the paltry cookbook shelf of a family who probably thought the book was about coffee or chocolate. She retrieves the motions and replays them in her mind—carefully dog-earing the page, pressing the curling cover flat, slipping the book between her clothes and the zippered edge of her backpack. She imagines the book now, nestled under her clothes in the drawer, hidden, as if to ensure that when she travels to the places the book takes her, she can't be followed. The thought relaxes her a bit.

Once again, Jenna is startled from her thoughts, this time by sudden silence. She looks up to see Ellie, her mouth still open, squinting down the length of the table. Grace is staring right back at her and on her face is an expression of mixed boredom, maybe even disdain. Jenna isn't sure if Ellie has said something she missed or if Grace is just letting her know that she has gone on way too long, but immediately Ellie's face begins to flush, a reddening heat that starts at the base of her throat and turns her ears crimson.

“I-i-it's late,” she finally stutters. “I know you must all be very tired after your long day. I'm thinking . . . maybe . . . we should just save everything else for tomorrow, start fresh.” Ellie is nodding, seeking some acknowledgement from the stony faces before her but no one stirs or comments. “I think . . . um . . . after we're all done here, I'll go sit in the living room”—she motions behind her—“and if anyone wants to talk yet tonight, you are welcome to come and see me?” There is still no response.

“Okay.” Ellie takes a deep breath. “We'll wake you up about eight for breakfast—no bells or whistles or alarms here.” She laughs a little, looks back down at her lap. “I guess we'll see you all then, unless . . .”

Her palms are still open to the room, though the backs of her hands are now resting on the table, as if whatever she expected to fill them has failed to arrive.

“Okay. If you would carry your plates into the kitchen when you're done, we'll take care of dishwashing duty for tonight.”

As if on cue, chairs are pushed back, various attempts at balance are achieved, glasses and napkins clutched carefully, bony hips scraping chairs back into place along the table. The room is full and then they are gone. They are a group and then they're not.

T
HE STAIRS ARE
very steep and would creak like crazy if anyone tried to sneak out. The tree outside Sarah's window is also too far away to reach and probably too big to shimmy down anyway. She knows there is a front door and a back door to the house but hasn't had time or energy to really scope everything out. She has no reason to yet, though what little she has seen of the house and grounds is already mapped out in her head, like the light blue lines of an architectural drawing.

But Sarah is looking forward to a bed, a real bed in a room without other bodies in it, people going in and out, snoring, crying out in their sleep. Not like at the detention center and not like Tyson's place where she never knew when she would be woken up, who would be there ready to climb into the bed with her. She can't believe it's only a little after nine, barely dark. She would have been waking up about now, taking her first hits of the night, just thinking about heading out to find Saucy and them. It's warm enough now maybe they would have been crashing in the park, hitting that Dumpster behind the Dunkin' Donuts on 58th before heading up to Conroy.

Sarah laughs to herself that it's easier to get off the junk than it is to miss sugar this much. She has always loved sugar, summons her early childhood with images of Christmas candy, marshmallows in her hot chocolate, Halloween, and those little Valentine candy hearts—
BE MINE
and
LOVE YOU
. She can almost feel the chalky sweetness between her back teeth, like a craving, and realizes with a jolt that her reverie is probably just a symptom of withdrawal. Or maybe hunger. But when the food was right in front of her, she couldn't even eat it.

They never had enough food but always plenty of junk. Tyson kept her supplied and she knows she's been lucky that way. He likes to keep her primed, he says, maintain a little “li-bi-do” for the work. Stupid. An excuse. She doesn't have to want it to do it, and he knows that as well as anyone. In fact, he'd be pissed as hell if he thought she had something for another guy. But he likes to pretend that she has some desire for him, that she doesn't do it just because she has to. Weird how a guy like Tyson who acts so tough, so street, can pretend a girl cares about him, has to believe it to keep feeling like the world is turning just for him. Maybe she does love him, just a little. Maybe him wanting her to is enough, makes it real. Sarah herself isn't all that attached to reality anyway. It's no revolution on the street. It's all just a made-up world—there, here, probably everywhere.