Don't Fail Me Now (5 page)

“Tell that to Miss Child Protective Services,” she cries. “If it weren't for me, you'd be in some group home right now.” I bite down on my tongue so hard I taste blood. “I want a $300 down payment tomorrow night,” she continues, “and if I don't get it, I will be more than happy to escort you back to the police station and let them put you wherever they see fit. Understand?”

I nod silently, fighting back tears. She's probably bluffing, just taking out her anger at Mom on me, but I can't afford to find out. Despite everything we've already been through, Cass, Denny, and I still have each other. It's the only thing we have left, and I won't risk losing it, even if it means letting Mom sit in jail for another few weeks until I can figure out a new plan.

“Good,” Aunt Sam says with a self-satisfied smile. “In that case, welcome home, Michelle.”

Tuesday Night, Part 1

Baltimore, MD

Today at school I learned that whispers, which don't even pass through the vocal chords, can be deafening. And the whispers were by far the nicest of it; three different guys thought it would be hilarious and original to make a big show of asking me if my mom could score for them. My friends were barely better. I can't decide which is worse: Yi-Lo hugging me and confessing that her dad had recently struggled with quitting smoking, or Noemi over-apologizing for being mean about my hair, adding, “Seriously . . . that's some Lifetime Original Movie shit.”

After my last class ends at two twenty, I practically sprint through the parking lot, desperate for the comfort of the closest thing I have to a home now, also known as Baltimore's
inner-city outpost of the country's sixth-most popular fast-food chain, modeled to look like some kind of southwestern adobe hacienda by way of Legoland. It would be depressing under any other circumstances, but right now the Ellwood Park Taco Bell, which sits on a slow stretch of highway between an auto-body shop and a much more popular McDonald's, feels like a five-star spa (or at least what I fantasize a five-star spa must feel like, which is getting a foot rub while lying on a bed made out of marshmallows).

I've been working here since I turned sixteen, doing everything from stocking napkins to washing floors to filling burritos to working the registers, and I got promoted to shift leader about eight months ago, which means I get to boss around the newer people and micromanage the soda machine so the Coke comes out perfect, not too watery or syrupy. Even though we're in a bad neighborhood, we've got some good Yelp reviews going, and my manager, Yvonne, gets really competitive about beating the Taco Bell down in Lakeland. She was a high school track star back before her brother got shot and she had to start working full time to help pay for his medical bills. Apparently he's still in a wheelchair. I've never seen him, but she takes home a bag of food for him every night. That's probably why she's so cool about me having Cass and Denny around while I work. Yvonne knows what it's like to have people depend on you.

My shifts at this point are comfortingly predictable. From four to five we get a lot of kids, either high school age or younger ones who stop in for an after-school snack with a parent. This is by far the loudest hour, and food gets thrown on a regular basis. Afterward there is always at least one urinal full of broken taco shells, but one of the perks of being
shift leader is that I can make someone else scoop them out. Then from five to six it's Early Bird Hour, which means a lot of old people who come in alone and eat slowly while staring out the window. This overlaps somewhat with Family Circus, which goes from five thirty to seven and is mostly four- to six-person groups with your standard mom, dad, and assortment of children ranging in age from infants to teenagers. By that time the dinner rush is busy enough that I need to be on a register, and so I get to spend ninety minutes staring out at people who have the kind of life I want. You'd think families that eat dinner at a Taco Bell instead of sitting around a table at home like some Norman Rockwell painting would be kind of sad, but actually most of the ones that come in are really happy and playful. It's a treat for them. The moms don't freak out when a drink spills, and the dads make nachos into airplanes or show their kids how to drip water onto straw wrappers to make them wriggle like snakes. I always try to time my breaks so they happen during Family Circus. I can only take so much at a time.

After I get food for Cass and Denny, I go out back in the parking lot and sit on the curb. I've been stressing all day about how to come up with the extra hundred bucks for Aunt Sam, and all I can think of, short of robbery or selling Goldie for scrap metal, is to ask for an advance on my paycheck. In fact, I've been avoiding Yvonne for two straight hours because I'm so ashamed to have to ask for a handout. I start to listen to Mom's voicemail again to psych myself up, but then Yvonne bangs through the kitchen exit dragging two handfuls of garbage bags, and I know I have to seize the moment.

“Hey!” I call, shoving the phone into my back pocket. It's
a warm spring night, and a soft breeze—trash-scented, but still kind of nice—blows through my hair. “Need some help?”

Yvonne drops the bags at the foot of the big gray dumpster we've affectionately nicknamed Hellmouth and shakes out her arms. “You know it,” she sighs. “My shot put skills aren't what they used to be.” Together, we heave the heavy trash up over the four-foot lip. On the last bag, runny cheese sauce drips down onto our forearms, and Yvonne dashes back into the kitchen for some napkins, cursing in Spanish.

“Nasty,” she squeals as we wipe ourselves down. “This job should come with a hot water bonus, 'cause you know I need two showers just to get the smell off me after.”

“I know,” I laugh.

Yvonne examines her clothes for stains. “Would you believe my mom keeps asking me why I don't have a boyfriend?” she asks, rolling her eyes. Yvonne is twenty-five and still lives at home. By her own calculation she's gained forty pounds since she quit school, stopped hurdling, and started eating free fried food three meals a day. “And I'm like,
Mama
, you see any man who likes a woman who smells like day-old ground beef, you send him my way.” She laughs bitterly. “At least I'm not in high school, though. I don't know how you do it, those guys can be such dicks.”

“It's not just the guys,” I say, flushing with shame as I relive the highlights of my day. I don't ever want to go back.

My mental state must show on my face, because Yvonne stops laughing and puts a hand on my arm.

“Hey, you okay?” she asks. “You've been kind of out of it today.”

“Yeah, sorry.” I know the more I tell my boss about what happened, the more sympathetic she'll be, but I don't think I
can bring myself to say the actual facts out loud. “I just had a bad weekend.”

“You wanna talk about it?” She smiles warmly. “I'm not above making a ten-minute trash dump, and I'm starved for gossip.”

“It's not the fun kind,” I sigh.

Yvonne's heavily lined brown eyes scrunch in concern, and I try to screw up my courage. “It's just my mom . . . has some health problems,” I say (technically not lying). “And there are some . . . unforeseen costs.” I feel like an asshole using what I know about Yvonne's brother to manipulate her sympathies, but I don't know what else to do.

“So you need money,” she says. Her tone's not judgmental, but hearing the words makes me feel like a beggar. And one of the first rules Mom taught me is that we Devereaux don't beg. We plan, we find, we take, we earn, but we do. Not. Beg.

“Yeah, but not like a loan or anything,” I say quickly. “I was just wondering if there was any way to get paid sooner than Friday.”

She frowns. “Corporate doesn't let us give advances on checks, but—”

“It's fine, forget about it,” I say, trying to smile like it's no big deal.

“Let me finish!” she says. “
But
I know how hard you work, and I know you got those kids to take care of, so if you need cash, I could loan it to you.”

“No, I couldn't take your money.” I wish I could rewind time ten seconds and just not bring it up. Yvonne is the closest thing I have to a regular friend, and I'm getting dangerously close to making her pity me.

“Don't worry, I wouldn't give it to you for free,” she laughs. “But I can spare a couple hundred for the next few days, and then you can just sign over your check to me.” She leans in conspiratorially. “I'm secretly loaded,” she whispers and then cracks herself up laughing.

I relax a little bit. “Thanks,” I say. “But you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't really need it till Friday anyway.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” I force a smile and lie through my teeth. “Just making a big deal out of nothing.”

“All right, if you say so.” Yvonne shoots me a suspicious side-eye and starts trudging back toward the kitchen. I shove my hands in the pockets of my loose black uniform pants and look up at the sky. There's one of those perfect half moons tonight, like a black-and-white cookie missing the chocolate part. I remember being freaked out as a kid that someone was eating away at the moon when it wasn't a full circle. But then Buck told me about the shadow of the earth and how the moon is always whole, it just doesn't always look it. He even taught me a rhyme to track the phases:

If you see the moon at the end of the day
A bright full moon is on its way.
If you see the moon in the early dawn
Look real quick, it will soon be gone.

“Hey,” Yvonne calls, and I look over to see her standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the garish restaurant lights. “There's gonna be an assistant manager job opening up this summer. It's salaried and everything, like $30K with benefits.
If you want it, it's yours. Could solve some of your problems.” She lets the door slam shut, and I hang my head, feeling heavy all over.

I should be happy. She's right: Money like that would solve a lot of problems. If I took that job, I could pay for everything. I wouldn't even need Mom . . . because for all intents and purposes, I would
be
Mom.

But I want more than that. I want more than a crappy service job and a house full of ghosts. I want more than the kitchen scraps. I want more than half the moon.

I don't know what it is I want, exactly, but I know I want more than that.

• • •

Doing math at the register helps me calm down. Numbers soothe me, the way they play by the rules, always bending to my control, adding up the same every time, neat and easy. Even though I know the prices of everything by heart and can do the totals in my head, we also have a digitized screen that makes my job as easy as punching a button with the item name. So after a bit of therapeutic quesadilla equations, I let my brain drift and start doing other, more urgent tallies.

By some act of God, Goldie still runs, but the sum of her parts can't be more than a few hundred bucks at this point—enough to buy me time with Aunt Sam, sure, but then what? Without a car, I'd still have to buy bus passes for the three of us, and the delicate balance of drop-off and pick-up times would be shot. It wouldn't be worth it, especially since I really only need the money for three days. I wrack my brain for anything else I could pawn. Mom doesn't have any decent jewelry she hasn't already sold off, but we do have a good-sized TV and a
lot of old furniture in okay shape that might sell on Craigslist for fifty bucks a pop. Of course, I wouldn't be able to sell it tonight, but I could cut school tomorrow, which would be a relief, and probably get it done in a few hours if our ancient desktop—which loads web pages at the approximate speed of an octogenarian eating a plate of churros—cooperates.

I'm so busy mentally pricing family heirlooms that it takes me ten seconds to realize there's a customer standing in front of me who's just staring.

“I'm so sorry for the wait, sir,” I say with as much sincerity as I can muster. This guy can't be much older than me, but he's white and blond, and I've had enough experience with disgruntled customers to know when to play it safe and suck up to them, especially on a night like tonight when I'm phoning it in. I part my lips in some semblance of a friendly smile. “Welcome to Taco Bell. May I take your order?”

“Uh . . .” He looks up at the backlit menu that runs across the wall above my head. Great. One of those. It's called fast food for a reason, people. If you don't know what you want, please don't get in line and waste my time.

“Sir,” I say, trying and failing to hold my faceful of fake cheer. “If you're not ready to order, I'll help the next customer, and when you decide, you just let me know.” The dinner rush is peaking now, with all three registers at least five people deep. I start to beckon the next person, an Asian woman who looks about eleven months pregnant, when Blondie holds up his hands.

“Wait, please,” he says. “I'm actually—”

I cock my head.

“I'm actually looking for someone,” he says. “Is Michelle Devereaux working tonight?”

“Who wants to know?” I've heard that line used by Mafia toughs in a whole bunch of movies and always wondered if it worked. Plus, this dude is starting to piss me off. And after Mr. Orioles yesterday, I can't be too careful.

“Um, I do?” He laughs nervously.

I point to my enormous nametag, and his face turns even whiter than it already is, if that's possible.

“
You're
Michelle Devereaux?”

I nod, a little taken aback that he looks so shocked. Who
is
this guy? I don't think he goes to my school, but whatever he wants, it can't be good. Not with my luck the past few days.

“Are you going to order?” the pregnant lady asks loudly.

“Sir, if you're not going to order, please step aside so I can help the other customers,” I say.

He takes a deep breath and leans in, sweat beading on his forehead, damp honey-colored locks of hair hanging in his eyes. “Okay, look, I'm really sorry to surprise you like this,” he says, keeping his voice low. “But my name is Tim—Tim Harper—and I think my stepsister, Leah, is related to you.”

“What?” I ask, shaking my head. “Listen, I don't know what you want, but unless it's a taco, I really need you to step aside. Other people are wai—”

“Her father's name was Buck Devereaux,” he says quickly, his blue eyes darting nervously between my face and the napkin dispenser next to the register. “I mean,
is
Buck Devereaux. But he's dying. And he asked her to find you, so I looked you up on Facebook—”

“I don't even update my Facebook,” I snap. This is the part of the sentence I'm choosing to focus on, because everything that came before it has the makings of a tidal wave, and I can't get dragged under right now. I used to pray for my father to come back, to show up on our doorstep begging forgiveness or magically appear in the parking lot at school, leaning on Goldie with graying temples and a sad smile and offering to take me out for a beer so he could explain everything. But some preppy kid showing up out of the blue during Family Circus on the worst week of my life and dropping the bomb that Buck is dying? That shit I did not sign up for. I look Tim straight in the eyes. “You can either order some food or you can get out of my face right now,” I whisper.