The End of the World (4 page)

“Okay, I think I’ve got it.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say to end this conversation. I’ve heard of people rolling out the welcome mat for new people; this girl clearly hasn’t. “I’m supposed to tell the boys to go back to sleep, and I should only enter your room if I want my life to come to an abrupt end.”

She doesn’t crack a smile, just looks at me like she can’t wait to pluck me—a boy-sized splinter—out of her middle finger. “Cute, but don’t think I haven’t killed people before for such offenses.”

One eyebrow goes up and she turns away, heading back down the hall where she came from. I watch her go, transfixed for a long moment, unable to move from my spot. She’s kidding. I know she’s kidding.

I think.

Although, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if this chick went crazy. I’ve been here for all of thirty minutes, and I know this Shaye girl does everything around here, and I mean everything. She’s freaking Cinderella. Just before leading me to my room, she fixed a sandwich for a kid who wouldn’t shut up about wanting one, and picked up a screaming baby who got his finger stuck in an oscillating fan, and then tried to drag all three of my suitcases up the stairs by herself despite that same baby perched on her hip like an extra appendage.

And even though she’s helpful, I saw the pitying look she threw my way when she thought I wasn’t looking. She thinks I’m either lonely, afraid, or scared to be here—which I am so not any of those things, because only babies and old ladies are ever scared.

Another observation I’ve had is that the man who’s supposedly the “dad” here—Mr. Bowden, if I remember right—is a total pervert. And yes, I know enough about them to know when the shoe fits. You can thank our illustrious foster system for that. Todd and his wife tried to undo some of the damage these rotating homes have inflicted on me—their words, not mine. They were marginally successful for a while; but one thing they’ll never undo is my ability to spot a creep when I see one.

He scares her. I know that for sure. I also know I don’t like him at all.

*

Shaye

The kid thinks
he’s cute. Worse, he thinks this is a joke. He hasn’t been here long enough to know that nothing about this place is funny—not now or ever. It also isn’t temporary, at least not for the kids whose cuteness dried up a decade ago—as tends to happen to every kid past toddlerhood and too far removed from an acceptable adoptable age, which everyone knows is exactly one day after age three-and-a-half. By age four, a kid is washed up. Past the cherub-faced angel-baby cute-as-a-button phase and firmly into the spoiled brat, grow up and stop your whining stage.

By fourteen…definitely sixteen …the phases have been exhausted and all usefulness is shriveled and mangled and buried six feet under. At least any usefulness appropriate to talk about.

I give him two nights, maybe three, to find out for himself.

I just pray I’m not around when it happens.

In an effort to distract myself from the way my stomach churns at the inevitable scenarios looming in front of me, I plunge my hands into a sink full of scalding water and get to work on two days’ worth of dishes. It’s moments like these that make me feel much more like a bored, unsatisfied housewife than a nearly-seventeen-year-old girl who should be dating a football player and worrying about her next trip to the mall.

Not that it matters. The social side of school isn’t a high priority anyway.

My foster parents believe in learning by doing—meaning if I do my homework and the dishes and the laundry and the child rearing and the general
everything
around here—I’ll learn all I need to know about life. And more.

“Do you need help with that?” I jump at the sound of a quiet voice behind me.

A plate slips from my hands and lands in the sink, clattering into a few utensils as I stand there and gape at the kid named Cameron. No one has offered to give me a hand before. I’m not sure what to say at first. What comes out is completely unintelligible and stupid.

“Um, I don’t…There’s not really…Um.”

“A simple yes or no is fine.” He shrugs. “If you don’t want my help, I can always—”

I hand him the plate. “Can you dry?”

Seriously, he’s a fourteen-year-old kid. Even though he sounds like a full-grown adult when he speaks, there’s no reason for me to be nervous. Reaching around him, I crack open a drawer, then pull out a blue towel and hand it to him. He takes it from me and begins to work.

“I’d much rather dry than wash,” he says. “Dish soap is bad for the cuticles.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “You care about cuticles?”

He sighs. “Not really. It’s just what Shelly used to tell me, so I thought you might want to know. Since you’re a girl and all.”

I skip over his obviously sexist comment and focus on the important part. “Shelly?”

A small red stain climbs up his neck, a secret unintentionally spilling into the open. This kid blushes easily. “The foster mother I’ve lived with this past year. She hated to wash dishes by hand, but we didn’t have a dishwasher so there wasn’t really a choice. I would wash and she would dry every night until she got sick. It’s not bad when you have some company.” His voice cracks on the last word. He misses her more than he lets on.

It’s been seven years since I’ve seen my parents. I know the feeling.

Swallowing hard, I hand him a dripping glass and pretend to ignore his emotions and my own as I reflect on his words. “No, I guess it isn’t.”

This is the first night I’ve had company in the kitchen. It’s strange, but I already like this arrangement better. If I let myself, I could probably get used to it. So I resolve right then and there not to.

“How did she get sick?”

“She got pregnant with her first kid a few months ago. I guess babies mess you up sometimes, and—lucky me—it happened to Shelly. It’s the reason I had to move out. My foster father couldn’t take care of me and her, not with the other jobs he works.”

My skin grows cold, and I say nothing. There’s nothing to say. Life sucks for both of us. It’s hard to manufacture encouraging words when all you have available are empty emotions. I plunge my bare hands in the soapy scalding water in an effort to warm myself up.

“So how long have you lived here?” Cameron asks me. I’m not sure if he’s making small talk or if he’s actually interested, but I decide on the latter and answer.

“Almost three years now. I moved in right before my fourteenth birthday.” I clear my throat against the sadness that accompanies that statement, easy to do because sorrow holds me in its arms like a lover through a storm. This place is my storm; my first foster home and also my last. When you have no grandparents, and your parents and older sister die in the same car crash and no other immediate family members step up to take you because you’re already known as a handful and they may or may not blame you for the accident, options are limited.

I just wanted them to bring me ice cream, chocolate with extra sprinkles and gummy bears. My mother didn’t want to; my daddy said yes. He always said yes, because he loved me so much. I didn’t mean for them to get hit by a semi-truck and die on their way there. I didn’t mean to not have a family or anyone who loved me anymore.

My options were limited to first a group home, and to this place. I’ve tried to get moved to another home; it never worked out for me. Carl’s right; no one would want me anyway. Since my parent’s died, no one ever has.

“So you’re seventeen?” Cameron takes a spatula from my hand and wraps it in the towel. “Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look seventeen.”

I try not to smile at his proper choice of words. “Sixteen for three more months. I turn seventeen on May sixteenth.” I hand him a fork. “How old do I look?”

He shrugs. “Older than that.”

I flinch. If he only knew how much older I
feel
…

“So, May sixteenth…” he says as though it’s the most interesting fact about me. Truthfully, it might be. “I’ll remember that. Assuming I’m still here, we’ll have to do something fun that day.”

I don’t tell him that he will be, or that if we do something fun it will be the first time I’ve celebrated that day in nearly three years. “I’ll take you up on that. We’ll go to…Olive Garden or something.” Lame, but the best I can come up with under pressure.

Considering the look he gives me, he agrees with my assessment. “That’s crap Italian food,” Cameron says. “Might as well open a can of Spaghetti O’s. Which I hate, by the way. Nothing but corn syrup and a bunch of ingredients most people can’t even spell, never mind digest.”

“Tell it to someone who cares.”

“Maybe I will someday.”

He sets down the towel and faces me. I glance sideways at him, once again finding it hard not to smile at the way he describes something most people just open and eat. This boy is the strangest combination of funny, serious, young, and old soul that I’ve ever known, especially considering his smallish body and maturing face.

It’s weird, but I like it. It’s like talking to a kid…but not.

I pull the plug on the drain and lean against the counter. “Fake ingredients or not, Spaghetti O’s are a classic. That’s like saying you hate cheese. Low class and completely un-American.”

“Then you’re going to hate what I have to say next.”

My eyes narrow. “You hate cheese? No one hates cheese.”

A slow grin crawls across his face. “No. I wish I lived in Europe. Specifically Italy.”

My eye roll can’t be helped, and I give the kid a shove on the shoulder just as Alan starts to make babbling noises from his spot on the floor. He’s crawled toward the fan again. This is new, his fascination with the spinning blades, and he’s currently only a couple of inches away from becoming four-fingered on his left hand. Unable to handle another crying fit that would no doubt last until sunset, I pluck him off the ground and settle him against my hip. The house is blissfully quiet for the moment, and I’d like to keep it that way.

“Europe is stupid,” I say, even though I have no personal experience to back up that statement. I decide I don’t need any and shrug for extra emphasis, then turn to reach for a toy Alan dropped on the floor. Straightening, I cringe when his mostly bald head grazes the tray of the high chair. The brief contact barely deserves a whimper, but of course his mouth opens in a silent scream, which quickly turns into a wail that cuts into the formerly quiet afternoon air and makes every part of me tense up.

It isn’t long before the sound is followed by a
Shut that kid up!
from Tami and a
What’d you do this time?
from Carl and a
Hold me
from Maria and an
I wanna a peanut butter sandwich
from Pete. Just when I feel like sitting down to cry as I’ve done so many times before, I look over to see Cameron staring at me like he’s waiting for something. I have nothing to offer, but then it doesn’t matter because his wide eyes slowly turn soft, and before I can ask him what he’s doing he reaches for the jar of crunchy Skippy and the loaf of white bread.

And even though Pete will complain about whole peanuts and the pasty white bread because creamy and wheat are the only thing he’ll touch…

I have the strangest feeling my life just got better.

Cameron

I
’ve never ridden
a bus to school, but that’s what we do in the Bowden household. We get up, make our own lunches, see Maria and Alan off with the daycare van driver, walk Pete to his own bus stop, then get ourselves ready to catch the bus by eight o’clock. I never saw Carl or Tami. My guess is they’re still asleep. Makes me wonder what anyone does for money around here, other than take in a bunch of foster kids and call themselves full-time parents.

I try not to think about Shelly packing my lunch every day.

I try not to think about the
have a great day
notes she used to tuck inside my box right next to the turkey sandwich on rye that quickly became my favorite.

I try not to think about the peanut butter sandwiches that I’m already sick of making and eating.

I try not to think about the car rides to school with Todd or the way he would crank up bad eighties music and force me to sing along, mumbling the words he didn’t know himself.

I try not to think.

I try not to think.

Thinking has never done me any favors anyway.

“Let’s see…” the woman behind the desk says as she rifles through what I assume are my registration papers. This is my fifth school in four years. With my name, address, birthdate, and last school typed across the top, they look painfully familiar. “It says your last name is Tate, is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am. And I’m fourteen, in ninth grade, live with Carl and Tami Bowden, and my sister goes to school here also.” It feels wrong to call Shaye my sister, but I’m sure that’s what they think and I don’t know what else to say. Before I can recite Shaye’s name, the woman beats me to it.

“Yes, we know all about Shaye McCormick.” She makes a sound that I wish I could translate, but I’m not fluent in sighs and tongue clicks. “Don’t we, Caroline?”

Caroline must be the woman at the other desk—the woman with the curly red hair that could use the benefits of straightening cream and a blow dryer. I know this because Shelly used both faithfully. The women share a smile that speaks of an inside joke, but I don’t think it’s funny. I might not know Shaye very well, but I know condescension when I see it, and no sixteen year old girl deserves to be on the receiving end of it from adults, especially not girls saddled with more responsibility than either of these women would be able to endure even at three times Shaye’s age. At least I’m guessing three times. They have enough wrinkles for it.