Read You Are Here Online

Authors: Liz Fichera

You Are Here (5 page)

Chapter 12

Twenty-Four Days and Twelve Hours Before

E
ven though my old school was only about twenty miles away, Valley High and South High were like different planets in different galaxies.

South High had an enormous parking lot crammed with cars. Unlike Valley High, the cars in the South parking lot were from earlier decades. It was like watching an old sitcom, looking out among the parking spots. As we got closer, I could barely hear my own thoughts because of competing car stereos, which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing because my brain was performing self-sabotaging anxiety backflips. To make everything a gazillion times worse, I felt at least three dozen pairs of eyes on me—or imagined it. Then the whistles started. I’d never been whistled at before, at least not that I could remember.

Marisela deserved every whistle, every lingering stare. She was so senior-girl chic in her low-rider jeans, layered tees, and cropped leather jacket. Her hair cascaded in shiny waves over her shoulders, looking, I swear, red-carpet ready. She told me that A New Start had a clothing closet and that I would be allowed to pick out a few outfits if I needed more clothes for school. She said the clothing options there were surprisingly awesome. “Sometimes the clothing gets donated with the price tags still on. Can you believe someone would actually do that?” she’d said, her eyes round with disbelief. “Buy new clothes and never wear them?”

I nodded in agreement but only to hide my embarrassment. Unfortunately, I could imagine that extravagance. I’d lived it.
Before.
Before things got bad, Mom and I went shopping whenever we wanted just because it was fun. Because we could. Before, there were always new clothes and shoes and purses and book bags before the start of a school year. And whenever we went on vacation when Dad was still alive, like to Hawaii or Jamaica, Mom always treated me to new bathing suits, shorts, shoes—whatever I wanted. Always more than I needed. Who would have imagined that one day I’d be wearing donated clothes?

“Hey, Marisela!” a guy called from inside the driver’s seat of his car.

Marisela’s hand fluttered at him and her bracelets jingled.

“Over here!” Three girls sitting cross-legged on the hood of a green car as big as a boat waved at us.

“Who’s your friend?” yelled another guy leaning against a shiny silver bumper, and my cheeks flushed molten. He was all white teeth and rock-hard muscles beneath a tight T-shirt.

The catcalls and greetings continued until we reached the three girls seated on the hood of the four-door. Marisela continued to wave and smile and even blew one guy a kiss with newly manicured blue fingernails, her favorite color and now mine, too. It was like walking with high school royalty, the closest I’d ever been. I had no idea that Marisela Santiago, my brand-new friend, knew every student at South High. And to think that when I first met her on the swing set, I thought she’d be shy like me.

I was relieved to reach the green car. It was like a lifeboat in the middle of an ocean.

The three girls lit up for Marisela the moment we approached but then, just as quickly, I felt their eyes take stock of me.

Marisela didn’t waste time with long introductions, presumably because the first bell was set to ring any minute. “Everybody? This is Abby. Abby, this is—” she pointed at each of the girls, clockwise “—Angela, Raquel and Karol with a K.”

Like Marisela, all of the girls were hiply dressed—and not in a shiny-teen-magazine way but in very original ways. Angela was a blonde with gray leather pants and a white tank with more silver bracelets on her arms than Marisela, which I hadn’t thought possible. Raquel had tight shiny black curls dyed an orange-red. She wore faded jeans with holes in the knees and an oversize gauzy hippieish purple shirt that I instantly loved. Karol dressed how I used to dress at South High, in jeans and a matching jean jacket with white sneakers. The only thing missing from her outfit was a cowboy hat. Her straight brown hair was parted in the middle, very 1970s retro.

“Hey,” Angela said, nodding at me. “Sela told us you’d be coming. We’ve been waiting.”

“Oh?” I said, turning sideways toward Marisela.

“Yeah, I saw everybody last night at Girlz First.” She lowered her voice, as if it was a secret. “It’s kind of a teen club through A New Start. We’re required to attend once a week. But that’s okay. The ladies who run it are cool and real nice. We have fun and it’s supposed to keep us out of trouble, which it does.” She smirked at the three girls. “Mostly,” she added, which elicited a giggle-snort from all the girls. “Two weeks ago we had a sleepover and saw a movie and did each other’s makeup. You’ll see. You’ll be invited now.”

All three chirped their agreements and nodded.

The tension in my shoulders lightened. I’d be invited. Suddenly I realized that I had more in common with these girls than I thought. “Cool.” I exhaled. I did remember the care manager mentioning something about a teen girls’ club and weekly communication classes for Mom when Mom, Jack and I met with her last week, but honestly, that was practically a lifetime ago.

“I was going to tell you myself on Saturday in the courtyard but I didn’t want to lay too much on you at once.” She looked at my hair. “Besides, we had more important things to do.” She turned to her friends. “Awesome, yes?” She pointed her hand at me as if she were Vanna White on
Wheel of Fortune
and I were the hot prize. “You like?”

“Like?” Raquel said, grinning. “Girl, I
love
. Which reminds me. My roots are showing. I need a touch-up.” She patted her head. “You need to do me next. Tomorrow, maybe?”

Marisela nodded. As I watched them with their easy banter, I couldn’t help but wonder how these girls and their families wound up in transitional housing. How’d they wind up at A New Start? Attending Girlz First and picking out donated clothes? The only thing I knew about Marisela was that she’d moved to Phoenix from New Mexico during the middle of her sophomore year. She had a stepfather who’d made life hard on her mother. Mrs. Santiago was going to culinary school and worked in a kitchen at some resort in Scottsdale that required three bus transfers. That was all Marisela would share during the two hours she spent snipping and coloring my hair. She hadn’t asked me any more questions about our situation and I hadn’t offered any information.

In the distance the bell rang and everybody around us sputtered a collective groan.

“Time to make the doughnuts,” Marisela said in a deadpan voice. “Jeez, I’ll be glad to be done with high school.” The three girls laughed as they jumped off the hood, boots and sneakers slapping onto the pavement. Around us, the car stereos turned off, phones snapped shut and backpacks got threaded over shoulders. The faces had all changed but at least the sounds and sighs and groans were carbon copies of my old high school. I found comfort in that.

I heard myself laughing with them, grateful for new friends. Grateful knowing that not everything has to change when your life nose-dives.

Chapter 13

Twenty-Four Days and Six Hours Before

“H
ow was your first day?” Mom asked. She was surrounded by job applications in every color, some completed in her perfect cursive, some not. They littered our small new kitchen table like a pile of leaves.

“Fine,” I said, looking across at her, forcing myself to sound more confident than I felt. “I think it’ll work out fine. Kids are cool. Teachers are nice. Same old homework. No biggie.” I didn’t tell her that my heart had pounded like a freight train at the start of every class when I waited for the teacher to ask me to “tell us a little about yourself.” Or how I almost hadn’t eaten lunch in the school cafeteria until Angela and Marisela showed me how to use the Free Lunch swipe card. I couldn’t bring myself to ask any of the lunch ladies at the cash registers. And I certainly didn’t want to tell Mom about Finn’s orange flyers and the new one I’d spotted duct-taped to a stoplight two blocks from our apartment when Marisela and I walked home from school.

Even though Mom asked me some of the usual school questions, her mind was obviously elsewhere. Her wallet was spread open with her driver’s license, her Social Security card and a Visa credit card lined up against it. She kept pressing her forehead with her fingertips. I wanted to remind her about Honey. But I didn’t have the heart to go there. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week, if she’d found a job by then.

Mom’s black pen was flying over one of the job applications. Our care manager from A New Start was trying to help her get an entry position at a bank or a law firm, something where she would prepare real-estate paperwork. Said Mom would be perfect for it. That made Mom sit up straighter, compared to two days ago when Mom slumped with the realization that she was competing for jobs with people half her age with better computer skills and wondered aloud how she’d get offered anything. I really didn’t understand. I was just glad that today she was excited about a job. That would mean we were another step closer to getting our own place again, our own home where we could move back all of the stuff in storage and sit around our own kitchen table.

“What about you, Jack?” Mom half turned in her seat to make eye contact with my little brother.

“Great!” Jack said with more exuberance than I’d seen in him in a long time. He sat on the floor, organizing the contents of his backpack. You’d think he’d just been to Disneyland all day rather than a brand-new middle school. Clearly my little brother was the most resilient one in the family. Or the strangest one.

At that, Mom stopped what she was doing, pulled off her reading glasses and beamed at him. “That makes my day, Jackie Boy. What did you love about it?”

“Ramon. He’s cool. He makes school fun and he has lots of friends.”

She leaned her chin in her hands, still smiling at him. “Do you have some of the same classes with him?”

“No. But we have lunch and gym together. Those are the most important.”

Mom chuckled. “Naturally.”

“We’re gonna skateboard after dinner.”

“As long as you get your homework done.”

“I finished all my homework in study period. Piece of cake.”

Mom flashed another smile, the nonverbal equivalent of ruffling his mop of blond hair. I smiled inside, watching them. Mom adjusted her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose and returned to her job applications.

Then Jack looked at me and curled a finger. He nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his other finger. His gaze swept between me and Mom before he pulled out the top of a piece of paper from inside his backpack. It was fluorescent-orange. And blinding as a strobe light. My eyeballs flew open.

I stood up, fast, knocking my chair backward against the wall.

Whack!

“Jennifer?” Mom said, placing a hand against her throat.

My breath caught. I was still focused on the piece of paper peeking out of Jack’s backpack. “I told you, Mom. It’s Abby now. You have to start calling me
Abby.

Mom’s lips sputtered. “Okay,
Abby.
” She sighed. “Where’s the fire?”

“It’s nothing,” I blurted, avoiding her eyes and picking up my chair.

Jack stifled a giggle.

“There’s something I forgot to give Marisela. That’s all.”

“Okay,” Mom said, unconvinced. For the first time since I got home from school, I was getting her undivided attention. Of all times for a moment of parental clarity.

I glared back at Jack, silently conveying that I would seriously consider strangulation if he showed even an inch of Finn’s orange flyer to Mom. I wanted to figure out how to handle it without involving her. Mom carried enough weight on her shoulders. One more burden would be like rolling a boulder over a grain of sand. “Come on, Jack,” I said. “I’ll walk with you to the Santiagos’.”

“Can’t you just call—?” Mom said, but then she stopped herself and closed her eyes for a moment. No phones. Yeah, we didn’t have our own anymore. There was a main phone in the resident community area, which was really just an apartment in our complex converted into a central living space where the Moms were supposed to gather on Monday nights for presentations and raffles and stuff. That was where Mom was told she could check her community voice mail. “Okay, just go,” Mom said, shaking away the realization that we were in fact cell phone—less at the moment, and shooed us through the front door with a wave of her hand. “But be back in thirty.”

“What are we having for dinner?” Jack asked.

“I have no idea but I’ll figure out something.”

“I can help you cook something—I mean, if you need me to,” I said.

Mom smiled up at me after stifling a split second of surprise, a beaming smile like the one she’d just given Jack. “Why, thank you. I appreciate that.
Abby.

I play-smirked at her for accentuating my new name. I had to admit: the more I heard it, the more I loved it.

Without another word, I followed Jack through the front door. He grabbed the skateboard just inside the door, the one that Ramon had loaned him. He left his backpack behind after zipping up the pocket with the traitorous flyer.

The moment we reached the courtyard, I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. “Where did you get that?” My words hissed. He knew what I meant.

“On a pole by the bus stop. Ramon saw it first. Said it looked like you.”

I exhaled.

“What’d you tell him?”

“I said it was.”

My voice rose another octave. “Jeez, Jack. Why’d you do that?”

“Because it’s true?” His voice was incredulous, as though he thought I was crazy for suggesting that he should have lied to his new friend. His face turned serious. He looked exactly like Dad and I had to turn away for a second and shut my eyes. “Who’s Finn, Jenn?”

“It’s
Abby.

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.
Abby.
Who’s Finn? Are you in trouble or something?”

“No,” I exhaled. “Finn is Will Finnigan. You know, the Finnigans who own the stables where Honey lives?”

“Honey? What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I hope. Except I have no idea how we’ll pay her boarding fees. I’m sure the Finnigans aren’t very happy with us at the moment, especially since we’ve dropped off the planet.” And then it hit me like a lightning bolt.
That
was why Finn was trying so hard to find me, why he was papering the city with his orange flyers. The Finnigans needed to know why Honey’s boarding fees hadn’t been paid. Needed to know who would be mucking her stall each day. They needed to know what to do with her. I suddenly felt nauseous.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve dropped off the planet,” Jack said.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” I pressed my hand against my stomach.

Jack sighed. “Things aren’t too bad here, are they?”

“It’s not home,” I said quickly.

“It is now.”

My mouth snapped shut.

“What if Mom is still paying for Honey’s boarding?”

“With what? Treasure she dug up in the courtyard? Get real, Jack. Mom couldn’t afford a hotel room. I’m sure she’s not paying Honey’s boarding fees, either.” I felt dizzy, as if I should sit down. Jack reached out to steady me.

“Do you know for sure? Honey’s family. Mom wouldn’t forget all about her.”

My lips sputtered. “I don’t know about that....”

“Did you ask her?” he challenged.

“Not yet.” I paused. “Anyway, you’ve seen her. I couldn’t stand to give her one more thing to stress about. Could you?”

Jack considered this. Then his formerly smug face lowered to the ground and he kicked a pebble on the sidewalk with his big gray sneaker, hard. “Guess not,” he mumbled, and my shoulder blades crumpled.

I resisted the urge to take my little brother into my arms, especially if his new friends were close by.

A second ago life might have seemed normal. But now we remembered just how far from normal we really were. We were all one step away from shattering into a million pieces.

The thought of losing Honey stabbed at my heart. All of the things that had gone well today vanished in a heartbeat.

Other books

Operation Sea Ghost by Mack Maloney
Hillary_Tail of the Dog by Angel Gelique
Little Girls Lost by Jonah Paine
Aethersmith (Book 2) by J.S. Morin
Killer Look by Linda Fairstein
The Vampire's Love by Ramona Gray
Ransom by Jon Cleary