Once in a Lifetime(21)

That had been less painful than this—being with a group of twenty kids staring at him with excitement and hope that he was about to do something cool. Because he had nothing. To stall, he dumped out the bucket of popsicle sticks, spread them around. Did the same with the glue.

Pink tugged on the hem of his T-shirt. “So what are we doing, mister? Making something really neat, right?”

“Right.” He shoved things around in the supply cabinet, looking for something—anything—to help him.

“Are we going to do it today?” she asked.

He turned to her, but she appeared to be utterly unconcerned over the long look he gave her, the one that would’ve had a grown man cowering in his boots. She just met his gaze straight on and smiled.

Last year in Thailand, he’d had a group of local teenagers assigned to assist him on a project. They’d been quick studies, smart as hell, and, best of all, resourceful. During their off time, they’d shown Ben how to weave. Baskets, hats, even shoes. An engineer to the bone, Ben had taken their weaving techniques one step further. He’d taught them how to extract lumber from the piles and piles of debris that lay everywhere. What had worked in their favor was the humidity, which made the wet scraps they found thin, malleable, and easy to work with. They’d been able to weave effectively with no tools at all. Using building skills they learned from Ben, they’d made a bunch of aesthetically pleasing baskets. What had started out as a fun project to cure boredom and stimulate the teens had turned into a viable way for them to actually make a living—to trade the baskets for the things they needed to survive. Ben had left there knowing that he’d truly given something back.

He held no such illusions here. These kids weren’t going to remember him or these stupid sticks. But he still had an hour and twenty-eight minutes on the clock, so he had to do something. “Okay, we’re going to make a picture frame.”

“What will we put in the frame?” Pink asked, her cute little face upturned to his.

Good question. They didn’t care about getting a photo printed. These kids had cell phones and iPads and all sorts of shit on which they could bring up a picture at the touch of a thumb. “I meant a collage,” he said. “We’re going to make a collage.”

“What’s that?” someone wanted to know.

“Stuff you collect.”

“What’ll we collect?” another kid asked.

He smiled as the idea came to him.

Five minutes later, he had all the kids in the rec center parking lot, finding “treasures” from his truck. Kendra was cradling a few quarters and Oreos. Another girl had claimed all the chocolate-kiss candy wrappers he’d tossed in the back. One of the other kids had found a baseball cap and a pair of flip-flops; Ben had no idea whom they belonged to. Yet another kid went through the glove compartment, making Ben damn glad he no longer kept condoms in there. But his maintenance records were now officially someone’s art project. Several of the boys had gathered up the rest of his change and were making a mint off of him. One of them held up a ten-dollar bill with a whoop. Ben winced over the loss.

“Hey, this is a pretty napkin,” Pink said of the—surprise—pink napkin she’d found. It had seven digits on it. A few weeks back, a waitress had scribbled down her number and shoved it in Ben’s pocket, and he’d forgotten about it. “Uh…” he said, but Pink was cradling it as though it were gold, so he let it go.

Someone else had found several coffee cups and a parking ticket. Ben winced again. He’d forgotten about that ticket…

An hour and twenty-six minutes later, they were done. Each kid had a frame made by hand out of popsicle sticks, and inside each one was an assemblage of things they’d collected—from his now-clean truck.

Win-win, he thought.

When he’d been relieved by Ms. Uptight Teacher, he headed back to his blissfully empty truck. He slid behind the wheel and started to turn the key when he saw two familiar little redheads walking down the street.

Alone.

Shit. “Don’t do it,” he said to himself. But he put the truck back into park, pocketed his keys, and got out. “Hey.”

Pink, holding her sister’s hand, whipped around. When she caught sight of him, she beamed. “Mr. Teacher!”

“You’re walking home,” he said.

“Well, yeah. But on the next block we run, ’cause that’s where Kelly and the mean dog live.”

He sighed grimly. “Get in.”

She beamed.

Kendra beamed.

And the next thing Ben knew, he’d put them both in his truck, cinched down by seat belts, legs swinging, smiles across their faces.

He pulled up to their foster home and idled a minute. “How long have you lived here?”

They both shrugged. “A while,” Pink declared. “Since all the bad stuff.”

He was afraid to ask, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to. Pink didn’t have a filter. “Our grandma died,” she said. “And our daddy’s up for the big one, so he couldn’t take us to live with him.”

Ben craned around to stare at her. “The big one?”

She shrugged again. “I’m not real sure what that means, but he’s very busy doing it because he hasn’t come to see us.”

Ben was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant. The guy was in prison for murder. Not that Ben was going to explain that to a five-year-old. He got out of the truck, unbuckled them, and waited until they were both inside their house.