Don't Fail Me Now(11)

Denny nods solemnly but then looks out the window and instantly brightens. “There’s Cass!” he says, poking a chocolate-covered finger past my cheek. I turn to see my sister sprinting toward the car like she’s gunning for an Olympic medal, her backpack—which probably weighs forty pounds, almost half her weight—bouncing behind her. A few yards beyond, a pack of girls who somehow look both menacing and prissy, the kinds who might not be able to throw a punch but who could destroy your life with a single Facebook wall post—dash out of the front doors and start to follow her, stopping only when they see the car.

Cass throws open Goldie’s passenger door and jumps in, but before she manages to pull it shut, I hear one of the girls shout, “You better run, dyke!”

“Go,” Cass pleads. Her face is ashen, and as she tries to buckle her seatbelt her hands tremble.

I peel off as fast as I can, trying to wrap my brain around what I just saw. “What was that about?” I ask, once we’re a safe distance away. I glance over at Cass, but she’s just sitting there blank faced, clenching and unclenching her shaking fingers. “Wait, is it your blood sugar?” I ask. “Did you run out of insulin?”

“No,” she says, rolling her eyes. Only a thirteen-year-old could switch gears from mortal terror to bitchiness in two seconds flat.

“Why were those girls chasing you? And why did they call you a—”

“Were you playing tag?” Denny asks excitedly.

Cass crosses her arms. “No,” she says. “They’re just assho—”

“Mean girls?” I interject.

She nods, looking away. “Just because Erica and I don’t wear skirts or care what boys think . . .” she mumbles. Unlike me, Cass has managed to find a best friend, a monosyllabic tomboy named Erica who sometimes comes to our house on her skateboard to do homework and play video games, although I haven’t seen her much lately. Erica’s mom is a single mom, too, and reportedly lets the girls watch R-rated movies on Netflix. She does Erica’s cornrows and offered to do them on Cass, but that’s where my mom drew the line. Who knew she had one?

“You should tell the principal,” I say. “That word, what they called you—you know what it means, right?”

Cass looks at me like I’m an idiot.

“Okay, well, then you know it’s hate speech.”

“Whatever,” Cass sighs.

“Fine, forget it,” I say. And just like with Denny, I give up without a fight, not because I don’t care but because it feels like I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours walking through land mines, and I don’t think I can survive setting off another blast.

? ? ?

I don’t have work Mondays, so on our way “home,” we stop at our real home to pick up clean clothes and toiletries to tide us over for the week. Amazingly, the time spent gathering our stuff is actually pretty relaxed. I think finally being somewhere comfortable for the first time since yesterday morning helps the tension of the day start to diffuse for all of us, and by the time we pile back into Goldie to drive the ten miles to meet our reluctant legal guardian, Cass is talking again, Denny has bathed and is dressed in something that almost fits, and I’m coming close to starting to feel not entirely hopeless.

When we get to the door of Aunt Sam’s fourth-floor walk-up, clutching the pillows and blankets and stuffed animals we’ve stripped from our beds, she’s lying on her ratty chintz couch with her bare feet up on the coffee table, eating egg rolls from a greasy wax bag and watching TV.

“What’s all that?” she asks. “This isn’t a storage facility.”

“Oh, we just figured we’d save you some laundry,” I say, forcing a smile.

“Mmmm hmmmm.” Sam raises a skeptical eyebrow and returns to her news broadcast. “By the way, I picked up Chinese,” she says. “It’s on the counter.” I was so unconvinced she would remember to feed us that I actually packed instant oatmeal and ramen noodles from our cupboard at home; the prospect of a freshly cooked take-out meal is positively exhilarating. We drop our stuff eagerly and crowd into the dark, narrow kitchen, dividing the two small containers of pork fried rice and chicken lo mein (not enough to feed a family, but I decide to take it as a nice gesture from a notorious cheapskate) onto paper plates.

As we file back into the living room, the TV’s still on, but Aunt Sam is slipping into her flip-flops and digging out a crumpled pack of Pall Mall Lights from her purse.

“Michelle, come outside and talk with me a minute.” It’s not posed as a question, and I feel a pang of despair, not only because whatever my aunt wants to talk to me about can’t be good but also because I have to leave my plate of hot food to either slowly congeal or be picked over by my ravenous siblings—probably both.

I follow her out the door and down the stairs to the sidewalk outside her building. Above us, a red-and-white neon sign for the Hung Hing Chinese Restaurant flickers irritably.

“Listen,” Aunt Sam says, taking a long drag on her cigarette, her lipstick leaving a wet, pink ring around the paper when she takes it out to exhale. “I want to help you guys. You know I do. You’re my flesh and blood. But—” She takes another long drag, blowing the smoke out her nose this time, like a dragon. “I can’t have you stay here for nothing. If you’re going to be living here, you’re going to be contributing, understand?”