My Name Is Venus Black(28)



But Tinker doesn’t cry. Instead, he gets really angry with himself, because he’s almost certain now this nosy Tessa girl is onto him. Why was she asking about Venus? He thinks about how stupid he is. How stupid to take Leo. How stupid to get a tattoo. How stupid to think he could turn his life around. How stupid to think all this could end up any other way than bad.

By the time he stumbles up to his apartment to drink beer and pass out, he knows what he has to do. It’s time to get rid of Leo.





Somehow, I thought that five and a half years would be enough time to make the damn reporters forget. But I was wrong. I’m standing on a corner at the Seattle Metro bus stop in downtown Issaquah when I spot several reporter types rushing down the sidewalk in my direction. They probably followed the Echo Glen van from the parking lot.

I fight the urge to run—to the tire store across the street, or the grocery on the other corner. Maybe I could lose them out a back door. Or maybe not. I don’t want to risk missing the bus I’ve been waiting to board for years.

So I stand my ground, gripping my suitcase in my left hand, hiding my face in the crook of my right arm, my big hair helping to shield me. The news people gather around me anyway, snapping pictures like birds pecking at the same worm. Shouldn’t there be a law against this?

Just then, to my relief, I hear the bus approaching. One of the reporters offers me a ride. The others fire questions without waiting for answers:

“What are your plans, Venus?”

“Do you think your sentence was fair?”

“Why isn’t your family here to pick you up?”



“How does it feel to be nineteen and free?”

“Do you know what happened to Leo?”

This last one catches me off guard. I should have known they’d bring up Leo, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve spoken his name aloud. Everyone at Echo Glen knew better than to bring up the subject of my missing brother.

Finally the bus screeches to a stop in front of me and the doors gasp open. Without turning around, I scramble onto the bottom step. “Quick! Close the doors,” I tell the driver. He looks at me strangely.

“Can’t you see? They’re fucking reporters!”

The driver glances over my shoulder, shrugs, and pulls a lever. I hear the doors snap shut behind me.

“Thank you!” I say, finally allowing myself to exhale. I step up to pay, and as I dig in my pocket for the fare, I venture a glance outside. The reporters are casually walking away. Clearly none of them ever planned to board.

Embarrassed, I carry my case down the aisle toward the back, where perhaps there are some passengers who didn’t witness my stupid little scene. I stash the case, then slide into an empty row and do my best to slouch from view. Which isn’t as easy as it used to be. Despite the shitty food at Echo, I’ve grown three inches, to a gangly five foot nine.

Inez always said I took after her mother’s side—most of them tall.

After a while, I realize I’m suffocating. Duh—I have on several T-shirts and tops, plus a sweater. When you leave Echo Glen, they let you raid the charity bin. But since we each get only one suitcase, we pile on the layers. I’m also wearing shorts beneath my high-water jeans.

I peel off the purse strapped across my chest, then the sweater and two other shirts. It still feels weird to carry a purse. After I bought it on a group excursion to Kmart, I had no idea what to put inside. Now it holds a self-help paperback, a “graduation” gift from my counselor, Sharon. There’s also a beautiful hand-tooled journal from Diane, the president of Echo Glen. And a few other items, like an Afro hair pick and a cheap wallet I bought to hold the fortune I had made on work release.



Okay, it isn’t a fortune, but three hundred dollars looks pretty good in there. I picked a billion damn berries and shoveled a million tons of horseshit to get that rich.

My original transition plan from Echo had me living and working at the YMCA in Seattle, helping out in their after-school program. My worst nightmare, in other words. I might as well have stayed at Echo Glen. All I want is a room of my own. Privacy. And a decent job until I can save enough to buy a car and move to California.

Doug, the guy who ran the transition program, repeatedly emphasized how hard it can be for a felon to get a job straight out of lockup, even if you’re a juvenile.

I know he’s right, especially since in Washington State, violent crimes like mine stay on your record forever and can never be sealed.

Which means any prospective employers who do any checking will quickly discover the truth about me. Which is exactly why I’m done being me. What Doug doesn’t know is that I’m not planning to look for work as Venus Black, the thirteen-year-old girl who got a gun and blah, blah, blah. I’m dumping that girl to begin all over again as Annette Higgman. That’s the name on a Washington State driver’s license I filched from a girl I met picking berries.

I would have preferred a softer name. A Sarah or a Holly, maybe. I’ve noticed that girls with easy, breezy names don’t end up at places like Echo Glen. My theory is that if you have a nice name, people are nicer to you, and so you become a nicer person than someone with a hard, mean name like Venus.

At least Annette, with her dark curly hair and noticeable nose, looks like me. Kind of. I don’t know how to drive, so I won’t be using the license for that. And she’s only a year older than me, so I can’t use it to drink. But it might come in handy if I need it for a job or a hotel room.

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