Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(59)

“Did you relay these suspicions to the mom?” I asked now.

“Yes, when I spoke to her two weeks ago.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t. She took notes. Then she cried.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“They were my success story,” Susan Howe said abruptly. “Five years of doing this. Five years of trying to help kids. They were my single success story, children, mother, family, all better off.”

“Until today.”

“Until today,” she agreed.

After that, we didn’t speak again.





Chapter 22


Name: Roxanna Baez

Grade: 11

Teacher: Mrs. Chula

Category: Personal Narrative

What Is the Perfect Family? Part IV

How do you know what you’re going to be when you grow up? A loser? An addict? Or, somehow, one of those who rises above it all? How do you know, when you’re still my age, that it’s all going to work out in the end?

I see these kids. They wear the same shirt every day. They have a lunch bag, but there’s nothing in it. They carry a binder, but their homework is never done. Some lash out, disrupt class. Show the world their pain.

But there are plenty more who never say a word. Just show up, sit in class, present but separate. They know the world is there. But they also know it’s already beyond their reach.

Adults judge. Kids, too. First thought in everyone’s mind: Girl’s no good, just like her mother. Boy’s a loser, just like his father. But some children will go on to rule the world. We’ve all heard the stories. They’ll channel their frustration and rage into business, political, athletic, artistic success. They’ll become the feel-good profile on the news. A model for others to follow.

How do you know which person you’re going to be? Especially if you’re a kid like me, with a mother who’s an alcoholic and a father who’s never existed. How do you know it’s all going to work out when you’re stuck in the soulless abyss that’s foster care?

Mother Del’s. Six months after being torn away from our mom, I can’t tell you if my sister and I are any better off. We’d gained a roof over our heads and food on the table. But those things didn’t make it a home.

Lola and I steal butter knives, screwdrivers, fingernail files, anything we can find to help us survive one more night. It isn’t enough to watch out for Roberto or Anya. They plot against us just as much as we struggle to outsmart them. They break dishes, bully other kids into breakdowns, burn cigarette holes in the ratty sofa, then blame us. Or really me. Anything to get Lola and me apart.

Lola can’t sleep. The constant strain of being on guard. The endless chore of changing diapers and comforting babies. She’s started picking at her hair, pulling out dull black clumps while the smudges grow darker under her eyes. She’s become one of those kids who shows up to school but is never really there. I tell her it will be okay. At least we have each other. And as long as our mom keeps following the steps, meeting the court’s requirements, we’ll all be together as a family soon.

Except as days turn into weeks, weeks into months, it’s becoming harder for either one of us to believe. Home is a distant memory. The nightly survival dance is our new reality. As I watch my little sister slip further and further away.

I’m the oldest. It’s my responsibility.

We should join sports, I announce one day. After-school activities. Anything to give us more time away from Mother Del’s. As a sixth grader, I have options. Soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, softball in the spring. I’ve never played any sports before, but that’s not the point.

For Lola, however, after-school activities for third graders barely exist. Programs are meant for weekends, organized through a community or rec center, coached by a parent. She can kill an hour or two, but not much more.

Walking home from the bus stop one day, however, I find the answer. A poster for the local theater. A production of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. Child actors wanted. I can’t help but laugh. Seriously? Oliver Twist? Have they hung out in foster care recently? But then I read on: Rigorous. Intense. Only Serious Talents Need Apply. Rehearsals are several hours every other night and most weekends. In addition, once the play is off and running . . .

It’s perfect. Lola and I will join community theater, and never come home to Mother Del’s again.

I drag Lola to the auditions. She doesn’t want to go. She’s tired. She’s depressed. She just wants to hang out with the babies. But then, we are there. She walks onto the stage, doing as she’s told. The lights come on, she looks up . . .

And my little sister comes alive. For the first time in months. She sparkles. She doesn’t just stand on that stage, she owns it. Afterward, everyone bursts into applause. The other little kids look at her, awestruck. And that’s it. My little sister becomes the first female Oliver Twist.

I go to work on set design, recruiting Mike Davis, who needs to avoid Mother Del’s as much as we do. For someone who bounces and jangles all the time, he has an amazingly steady hand once he’s focused. He’s also an incredible artist, turning plain plywood into elaborately painted backdrops. While both of us steal any sharp objects we can find. For our inevitable return to Mother Del’s.

I think Oliver Twist would agree, hope is a funny thing. You need it. Then there are times you have to let it go again. Except, of course, you can’t give up completely, or there’s no coming back.