Pieces of Me (22 page)

I shifted Dylan's weight so I could carry him with one arm, and I took Leo's hand with the other.

Hannah was at her desk. I stopped in the doorway, and she looked up. The color drained out of her face. She came around the desk.

“Maddie, what do you need?” she said.

I wanted to run. I really did. But I was done running—for Leo, for Dylan, for me. I met Hannah's gaze without any tears. “Help,” I said.

eighteen

Foster care was everything Q had said it would be and none of what he'd said it would be, all at the same time. Somehow Hannah had pulled strings, or maybe she had a picture of someone important with a goat, but she managed to get Dylan and me placed together.

My mother had told the judge she couldn't manage me, so I couldn't go home. I'd seen her once since that day in court. I didn't hate her. She just didn't have what it takes to be someone's mom—not mine, not anyone's.

We got to see Leo every second Saturday. In two months he'd grown about three inches. He wasn't on guard the way he used to be, always watching, watching, watching, and he didn't shrink if someone touched him. His grandfather was in jail. He'd probably rot there—Hannah's words not mine, but I liked the sentiment.

The first time I'd seen Leo's mother, I'd half expected her to yell at me or slap me. Instead she'd laid her hand on my cheek and smiled. “Thank you for taking care of Leo,” she'd said.

I think I would have liked it better if she'd yelled.

I always pasted on my happy face when we saw Leo. I was happy to see him, and I didn't want him to know how much I hated foster care. No one had been able to find Dylan's family. Eventually someone would be able to adopt him. I knew that would be the best thing for him.

No one was going to adopt me. First of all, I was too old. And second, I had an attitude problem. That's what I'd heard Joanne, our foster mother, tell the social worker on one of her visits. She said I was angry and sarcastic and didn't know how to be a kid.

I'd cop to the sarcastic, but I wasn't angry. What did I have to be angry about? And I did know how to be a kid. I was just way past that after everything that had happened.

Joanne didn't like the fact that I put Dylan to bed every night. You'd have thought she'd be glad she didn't have to do it. At least once a week, she offered. I'd just shake my head and say, “No, thank you.” I wasn't giving up Dylan. He needed me.

I always washed out the bathtub while he brushed his teeth so I could have a few more minutes with him. I was putting toothpaste on the brush when Dylan looked up at me and said, “Maddie, is it wrong to like Joanne?”

“No, it's not wrong,” I said, slowly.

“'Cause I still love you. And so does Fred.”

“I love you too, kiddo,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “And Fred. Now brush your teeth.”

Once Dylan was in bed, I went into my room and sat on my bed in the dark. I didn't want Dylan to think he had to pick between Joanne and me. I didn't want to do that to him. Like Leo, I wanted him to have a family that loved him, and that just might be this one.

When the house went quiet, I got my old backpack down from the closet. I found my whistle and the piece of broken glass.

I walked around all night, on kind of a visit to how things used to be. I stood in front of the building we'd lived in and looked up at the window of our old room. That made me think about Q. I hoped he'd find a way to get his house in the country someday. I probably should have been mad at him, but I wasn't anymore.

I walked by the organic foods market and the bakery and wondered if Lucy and the others were still scavenging on Monday nights. I spent a lot of time in the park, just sitting on the bench at the edge of the playground. I could almost see Dylan chasing Leo around the swings and flying down the slide with Fred on his lap.

I ended up at the library, sitting on my favorite bench and watching the sun come up over the river. That's where Hannah found me.

She sat next to me without saying a word. We watched the sun rise in silence, and then she nudged me with her knee. “Talk to me, Maddie,'” she said.

“What if I don't have anything to say?”

“Then I'll have to do all the talking. Is that what you want?”

“I'm running away,” I said. I didn't look at her.

“Yeah, I kind of guessed that part,” Hannah said. She stretched her legs out in front of her. “It's not fair, you know.”

“What's not fair?”

“You running away. Dylan and Leo, they need you.”

I shook my head. “No, they don't. No one needs me anymore.” I looked at her then. “You know what?” I whispered hoarsely. “It was better when we were all together and eating food out of the garbage.”

“It wasn't garbage,” she said softly. “And it wasn't better. Otherwise you wouldn't have showed up in my office with those kids.”

Something in her face changed. She slid down until she was sitting on her heels and then stared out at the river. “I have an idea,” she said finally. “Promise me you'll go back and you won't run away again until you hear from me. It shouldn't be more than a couple of days.”

I kicked a rock and sent it skidding across the grass. “Why should I?”

“Because if you run away again, I'm just going to hunt you down and we'll have another long conversation like this and you know you hate that. Plus I might be able to help, and what the heck do you have to lose?”

I stared at the water. It was as flat as a mirror. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“I'm just a natural, know-it-all, meddling do-gooder,” Hannah said with a smile.

She was right about that.

The next day when I got home from school, Hannah and my social worker were at the house. I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

“Come sit down,” Mrs. Thomas, the social worker, said.

“I'm fine here,” I said.

I waited for the lecture about my attitude, about how I needed to get along, about how I was a bad influence on Dylan.

Instead, Mrs. Thomas smiled at me and said, “We've decided you're not going back to school.”

Was this supposed to be my punishment? Because it was a really lousy one. I hated school. I didn't fit in and I wasn't ever going to.

But it wasn't a punishment. Mrs. Thomas had arranged for me to study for and write the ged exam instead of going to school. It turned out that Joanne was a teacher, and she would tutor me in the morning.

I didn't know what to say. I'd been such a pain in the ass, I couldn't believe she was going to do that for me.

The social worker went over the details, and then Joanne walked her out to her car. I leaned against the door frame. Hannah was standing by the sofa. She'd gotten to her feet when Mrs. Thomas had gotten up. “You work hard in the mornings and get your ged, and you could start university in January,” she said.

“So what happens in the afternoon?” I asked. January was too far away to think about.

Hannah walked over and smiled at me. “In the afternoon you'll be going to help at Grace House.”

“What's Grace House?” I'd been waiting for the catch, the punishment. Maybe this was it.

“Grace House is a foster home for babies who have been born to alcohol-and-drug-addicted parents,” she said. “They need a lot of love. It seems to me you might have some to spare.”

I went to Grace House the next afternoon. I wasn't sure if it was a punishment or a keep-Maddie-from-running-away thing. The front door was opened by a young woman in yoga pants with her hair pulled into a ponytail on top of her head. She was holding a very small baby in blue sleepers. She smiled and said, “Hi, you must be Maddie. I'm Claire.”

I could barely hear her, the baby was screaming so loudly. I nodded, and she handed me the baby. “This is Jesse,” she said. She turned and went back into the house. I followed her, holding the baby under his arms, out in front of me. Claire was already headed for the playpen in the middle of the room, where another baby was pulling himself upright.

Baby Jesse was screaming even louder. He kicked his legs, and I realized one of them was in a cast. The image of Leo lying in the hall, bruised and bleeding, flashed into my mind.

I folded my arms around the baby, pulling him in against my chest, against my heart. His face was red and wet with tears, and his screams rang in my ears.

I remembered all the times Dylan had thrown his arms around my neck.

I remembered holding Leo's hand as he told me about his grandfather.

I whispered softly to the baby. I don't even know what I said. I rocked him slowly from side to side and finally, unbelievably, he stopped crying.

He lifted his head and looked at me. I kissed the top of his head and breathed in his baby smell. He laid his cheek against my chest and closed his eyes.

And slowly, slowly, I felt his warmth settle into my heart.

Darlene Ryan
is the author of a number of books for teens, including
Rules for Life, Five Minutes More, Saving Grace
and
Responsible
. Her most recent title,
Cuts Like a Knife
, was a Junior Library Guild selection. Darlene lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.