Property of the State (2 page)

1.2: The Boobies

“You're lucky you're not on your way to Madison.”

Mrs. Petty threatening me with a transfer to an actual high school is weaksauce compared to making me ride in her forty-year-old Impala shitwagon. She can barely see over the steering wheel.

“Cooper likes having my GPA on the books. He's got budget meetings coming up.”

“Joey, you're not as smart as you think.”

I simmer for a minute.

“Fine. Cooper's budget has nothing to do with it. I get another chance because I'm a sad little orphan.”

Her lips go two-dimensional, then she lets out a long, slow breath. “You get another chance because there are people—like me—who believe in you. Despite how difficult you make it.”

In January, I plan to apply for early graduation. The last two summers, my various foster oppressors kept me out of trouble by packing me off to summer school. Sucked, but as a result I'll meet the requirements by the end of second semester; senior year would be a waste of my time. Mrs. Petty and Cooper will push back, but the guidelines are clear. I'll have the classes, the credits, the GPA. And once I have my diploma, I'll file for emancipation. Only sixteen and I have issues—according to everyone—so emancipation will be tough. But if the court won't grant it, I'm gone anyway. I can't handle living with the Bobbitts much longer. I'm way past ready to jump off the Services to Children and Families hamster wheel too.

Not that Mrs. Petty needs to know any of this. No point in giving her a head start on plotting against me.

I close my eyes. The interior of the car smells like burning metal. She keeps talking, but I don't listen. It's the usual speech.
One of these days you'll come to understand how hard we are all working on your behalf….Not just me, or your teachers, or Mr. Cooper, the Bobbitts too….It isn't nice the way you talk about them….You're lucky you're not living in a group home. Wayne and Anita took you in when your care options were paper-thin
….
blah blah blah
…

The car stops and I look up. We're at the Boobie Hatch.

“I'm supposed to be at work. Today is living room and library.” A man's gotta have priorities.

“I left a message on Mrs. Huntzel's cell phone. You can catch up tomorrow.”

It doesn't work like that. I have a schedule. Monday is dining room, conservatory, and foyer; the foyer floor has to be waxed and buffed, and the dining room can seat twenty-four, so it takes a while. Tuesday: living room and library. Thursday, I do the upstairs public areas and the finished parts of the basement. Friday, I clean Mrs. Huntzel's office and scrub the kitchen floor, catch up on anything outstanding. Saturday mornings, there's outside—anything the yard service doesn't take care of. Wednesday—tomorrow—is therapy. I'd miss that in a heartbeat, but Reid would come unglued if I skipped. So would Mrs. Petty, if she thought through the implications of what she just said.

“Come along, Joey.”

Wayne waits for us on the porch, shoulders straight and hands behind his back. Parade rest, so he tells me.

This visit is scheduled.

The temptation to flee is strong, but the thought of Mrs. Petty stalking me through backyards and over fences like a miniature Terminator stops me. I follow her up the steps.

“Thank you for coming, Hedda.” Wayne talks like this is his idea, but I know who calls the shots here. I look at Mrs. Petty. She doesn't seem to care.

“Will Anita be joining us?”

His face twists into a crazed scowl. I suppose he's trying to show concern, but to me he looks like he's having a hemorrhoid flare-up. “She has a doctor's appointment, I'm afraid.”

“How is she doing?”

“It's been tough, as you know.”

Anita used to drive a forklift at this big home improvement warehouse down in Clackamas. Stacks of plywood, pallets of lawn fertilizer, barrels of paint. One day in June, she got the forks jammed in the beams of a high pallet rack. Rather than call for help, she climbed the lift mast to see if she could free the forks herself. Thirteen vertical feet below, the concrete floor brought her to an abrupt stop. Now, three months later, she's in a lawsuit with her company and—near as I can tell—addicted to oxycodone.

But we're not allowed to talk about that.

Wayne leads us inside. It's a small house on the flats east of Mount Tabor between Eighty-second Avenue and I-205. The design is Lego Modern, but the construction is Rain-Soaked Cardboard. Every blocky edge is soft and frayed, the corners all dark with mildew. In the living room, a sprung couch is centered on the big boxy TV, old-def. As usual, Wayne is watching cable snooze. He's all about the news, while Anita lives for reality TV.
Who Wants To Be A Kardashian Towel Boy?
and
I Can't Stop Giving Birth!
compete with
Headline News
and roundtable shout fests. For me, it doesn't matter what's on. It's all noise.

One direction, the dining table is piled high with overflow from Wayne's office—he's some kind of insurance guy. Home way too much, which is all I need to know. The air is stale and smells of creamed chipped beef—Wayne's favorite meal. The other way, a short hallway under the stairs leads to the Bobbitt bedroom—
shudder
. One can only hope they don't actually mate.

The only thing the house has going for it is the second floor. Since her accident, Anita can't manage the steep stairway, so I only have to deal with personal space invasions from Wayne. He's bad enough, but at least he doesn't steal my money to buy dope. Excuse me.
Medication
.

“So what's the problem this time?”

Wayne used to be in the Marines, but all that's left of those days is his sharp voice. The rest of him is as soft as the couch where he spends most of his waking hours.

Mrs. Petty heads for the stairs. “Just a spot-check. How is Joey doing?”

“His grades are satisfactory. I wish I could say the same about his attitude.”

Goes both ways, Wayne
. He and I follow her up. Spot-check means a room search. She wants to know what I'm hiding.

My room—a narrow brown cell with a sloped ceiling—is spotless. Not much to mess up. There are no pictures or posters on the walls, no books except a student dictionary, an ancient encyclopedia set, and a Bible I've never opened. The twin bed is made to Wayne's Marine Corps standards, the itchy olive drab blanket taut across the thin mattress. The dresser is steel-framed pressboard. Socks rolled in the top drawer, shorts folded in the second. Shirts and pants below. I have a few items hanging in the shallow closet. The desktop holds only a Tensor lamp and a mug filled with pencils. I'm pretty sure Wayne comes in and sharpens them when I'm gone.

Mrs. Petty flicks the Tensor lamp on and off, then glances in the closet and pulls open my dresser drawers.

Wayne folds his arms and makes his drill sergeant face. “I check the drawers and closet for food every day.”

She and I both know stashing food is so nine years ago. She throws him a side eye he doesn't catch, then kneels to tap along the baseboards. When she hears a hollow spot, she looks back at me and pulls a Leatherman tool from her pocket, opens the flathead screwdriver. She slips the head into a narrow gap between the wall and the top of the baseboard. A two-foot section clatters onto the bare wood floor. Wayne draws a breath.

Behind the baseboard, I've cut away the drywall to reveal a shallow space framed with thin slats of pine. The wall studs are on sixteen-inch centers, making the space a little more than a foot wide, three inches deep, and four inches high—as big as I could make it and still hide it behind the baseboard.

Mrs. Petty stands up. “Empty. Should I be pleased, or keep looking?”

This particular hidey-hole is a gimme. I've never used it. There are a couple of others in the room, one pretty easy to find if she wants to, one I hope she'll miss.

“A sneak.” A vein stands out on Wayne's forehead.

Mrs. Petty seems less concerned. “How long has this been here, Joey?”

I shrug. She knows better than to ask me questions like that. She turns to Wayne. “I see it as a good sign. At least it's not stuffed with chocolate.” I've never hoarded candy, as she knows. I look out the barred window—for security, allegedly. The key hangs on a hook on the wall, but as soon as Mrs. Petty leaves, Wayne will retrieve it. He doesn't want me sneaking out at night. Or, apparently, escaping if the house ever catches fire. A shadow pressure of fear constricts my chest at the thought. I shove it down again and focus on the smoke detector on the ceiling above the window.

Mrs. Petty spends a few minutes tapping the walls without finding anything of interest. I'm not surprised when she unplugs the Tensor light and tries it in the one unused outlet in the room, just as she isn't surprised when the light doesn't work. She uses her screwdriver to remove the faceplate. The plug assembly, unwired, swings out on hinges. The space behind it is much smaller than the space behind the baseboard, an ordinary PVC electrical box. Mrs. Petty reaches inside and pulls out a USB thumb drive.

“What's this?”

She waves the seemingly innocuous object at me. Like I'd tell her what's actually on it.

“Wayne's collection of Internet porn?”

This is how I end up in trouble. But sometimes, a smart-assed remark is worth the look on their faces, no matter the blowback afterward.

1.3: Oh, My Nose

Mrs. Petty pockets the thumb drive, but I'm not worried. She won't find the hidden script Somers created to fake out the prying eyes of Katz IT. It's designed to auto-load on mount—but only if the spyware is present. Otherwise, all you see is a boobs-and-bullets game demo he put there to give the witless something to fret about.

Her gaze drips with disappointment. Story of my life. “Joey, I think I'll sit in with you and Reid tomorrow.” Oh good. A tag team. She eases past Wayne and heads down the stairs. His own parting shot features flecks of spit. “Clean this trash heap.” He doesn't slam the door on his way out. Not quite.

People say there are reasons I find myself in these situations. In the typical rundown, Mrs. Petty—or my therapist, Reid—will bring up my father, Orville, and my sister, Laura, dead when the house burned down. They might mention my mother, Eva, last seen tearing off in the family pickup around the time the fire broke out. Maybe they'll remind me I nearly died myself. A neighbor pulled me out of the burning house just as the first fire truck arrived.

The thing is, it all happened over ten years ago. I've been property of the state longer than I was in parental custody. I try to tell them: I barely remember what Laura looked like. As for Orville and Eva, well—I have a clearer picture of the back of my own head. If you ask me, post-traumatic stress disorder is just psychobabble used to control people who won't act the way the world thinks they should.

I rub my hands on my pants and glare at the security bars. Where I came from doesn't matter. Where I'm going even less. Right now, all that matters is Wayne and the next ten minutes.

I move to the door, crack it open. I can hear murmuring down below. Mrs. Petty is probably pointing out the ways things could be worse, maybe sharing an anonymous horror story about one of her other cases.
This situation with the computer,
she'll say
, it's perfectly normal
.
Boys like to look at explicit sexual imagery
.

So do middle-aged ex-Marines, but I doubt Wayne will cop to using my laptop to find spanking material.

I close the door and regard the trash heap. I vacuumed and dusted before school, a daily requirement. During her search, Mrs. Petty didn't make much of a mess, but I return the lamp to the desk and close up the hidey-holes. Just for giggles, I stick the window key inside the outlet compartment. Since she showed him exactly where to look, Wayne will get a cheap thrill when he finds it. If I'm lucky, he'll think she sussed out all my hides.

When everything is in order, I sit on the bed. Wayne's meltdowns follow a standard arc. Thunder, stomping, foaming. Once his heart rate passes one hundred sixty, he'll suck air until he can breathe again and then send me to bed. The Bobbitts aren't allowed to not feed me—regular mealtimes are part of my treatment plan. But Wayne's definition of a meal is pretty loose. I'll be lucky to get a couple of Kraft Singles on toast and a glass of milk.

But when Wayne opens the door, I can see something is off. His face is the color of his beloved chipped beef. Beads of sweat gleam in his crew cut. “What did you say to her?”

There's no good answer to a question like that. Wayne's pupils bounce side to side, as if he can't decide which of my eyes he wants to gouge out first.

“I asked you a question.” His voice has a crazy wobble. He takes a step, then another until he's standing over me. White goo collects at the corners of his mouth. A vein thumps at his temple.

“What did you
say
to her?”

“I didn't have to say anything. We could both hear you fapping as we drove up.”

Prolly shoulda have counted to ten.

Wayne picks me up, two-handed, and throws me against the wall. I don't have time to be surprised. The whole house seems to shake as I bounce off sheetrock and pitch face-forward into the corner of the desk.

A shatter of light blinds me. I fall sideways and crack the back of my head against the desk chair. Sickening waves roll from my gut to my throat. I'm not sure what I'm seeing at first. A scarlet glimmer through broken glass. Spilled paint splashed across the floor. Feels like something is trying to get at my brain through my sinus cavity. I reach for the edge of desk—anything solid. Then I see Wayne.

He looks glassy-eyed and ghost white. Something I've never seen before.

I put my hand to my face, touch gore. The pain hits and I fall back against the desk. Maybe I make a sound. Darkness threatens at the edge of my vision, fog the color of smoke. I blink back tears. I have to breathe through my mouth. The air tastes like metal.

“Wha'd you do t'me?” I'm not sure he can understand me. Even inside my head, the words sound like I'm talking through a wad of half-chewed paper.

Wayne backs up to the bed. He starts to tremble. A stain darkens his khakis at the crotch and down the inside of his legs.

The weird panic I feel at the sight of Wayne pissing himself is almost worse than the pain. All I want to do is get away. I stumble to the doorway, catch myself and somehow think to grab my backpack. I almost fall down the stairs, find my feet at the bottom. Leave a bloody handprint on the wall next to the front door.

When I step out onto the porch, I nearly collide with Anita.

Anita is Wayne's opposite, a broomstick with scarecrow hair and eyes like the undead. She's as tall as me, but not even half as wide. Now she's leaning on her cane, her face flushed from the three-step climb from the front walk. Nothing in her expression suggests anything is amiss. Even her voice is flat.

“Joey, what happened to you?”

“Wayne peed his pants.”

She's baffled, as usual. “What are you saying?”

“He
pissed
himself.” I lurch past her down the steps. The sun hangs over Mount Tabor, but overhead the sky has gone cloudy and dark. Anita taps her cane on the porch, pretending to be blind maybe. “Where's Wayne? Have you made supper?” I never make supper. Wayne doesn't like me around sharp things.

“I'm outta here.” Probably unintelligible, but whatever. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think this may be the last time I will ever talk to Anita. I take one last look at the house. Wayne peers back from my bedroom window, hands gripping the bars that keep me in at night.

As the rain begins to fall, I run.