23

Aster

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I’m pacing.

I pace when I’m nervous. I picked up the habit in prison, which I guess isn’t the worst thing you can pick up in an overcrowded state facility for low-risk women inmates.

I walk back and forth between two large oak trees at the side of the dorms, glancing up and down the street for Aidan. He’s picking me up this morning so we can complete the first of our cooperation credit tasks. Thanks to his stupid suggestion, we’ve been given an interview assignment, and today we’re meeting up with a former PPP student who graduated from Holsom and now runs a successful home renovation business.

I had no idea Aidan was in the program. Spend any time in prison and you learn pretty fast not to judge a person by their appearance. Nice-looking people do bad things; bad-looking people do bad things.

Everyone does bad things.

Some PPP students know each other from their work assignments, but I’ve been lucky enough to steer clear. My first-year task was Nikki’s dream job, working in the mail room. I dealt with Jim and Becca, and no one else. Fine by me.

Last year I was the one-person fundraising committee, calling former donors and possible donors and random donors and asking for money. Jim and Becca knew my criminal history, which made me a pretty good pick for wheedling money out of folks.

Then this year I got the resident advisor job, which no PPP student has ever gotten before. On the surface it doesn’t seem like the best idea to put an ex-con in the midst of a bunch of impressionable kids who are living on their own for the first time, but dig a bit deeper and find the right person, and you’ve got an R.A. who recognizes someone about to make bad choices and will work her ass off to steer them in a better direction.

That’s what Jim was banking on when he got me this job. He’s working diligently to find new campus positions for PPP students, but like in the real world, people are reluctant to hire kids with criminal records.

It’s because of Jim’s bottomless kindness that I’m pacing this morning. I’d tried everything to get out of working with Aidan, but every excuse I tossed out Jim batted back like we were playing a fun game of tennis.

I hate tennis. It was my requisite extracurricular activity in year one and it was awful. Even Jim admitted that in retrospect, taking someone out of prison and sticking her on a tennis court with kids who’ve never even seen the inside of a police station might have been too big a jump.

A car horn honks and I turn to see Aidan pulling up to the curb in a pale purple Volkswagen. It’s not the kind of car you’d expect to see being driven by a guy with muscles and tattoos and sexy dirty blond hair, but I’m determined not to speak to him, so I don’t make a joke when I get in.

“Morning,” he says.

I gaze out the window.

“I got you a coffee.”

I know. I can smell it.

“And a donut,” he adds. “I hope you like chocolate.”

I take my mp3 player out of my pocket and stick the buds in my ears, sifting through the music until I find a song that will drown out his voice. It’s a thirty-minute drive to the interview, and the last thing I want is to hear him talk. His lame apology, the coffee and donut, they’re just stupid, superficial gestures meant to make up for something he can’t make up for.

I meant what I said when I told him I don’t give second chances. My mother gave my father too many second chances, and by the time I was fourteen we were sleeping in bus stations, because overcrowded women’s shelters didn’t think “financial abuse” was a big enough deal to give us a room. When I was a kid, I thought it was normal for my mom to get an allowance. A handful of bills for groceries, just enough money for gas to make the return trip but get no farther. I thought it was normal for her to ask for money to bake cookies for her book club or buy a new sweater. And I thought it was normal for my dad to say no, even though he had new sweaters and a bowling league and drinks with his friends and steadily worked his way through four packs of cigarettes a week. To this day I can’t smell smoke without thinking of him and his condescending smirk, telling my mom we can’t have bus fare to go to the mall.

It was only when my little brother needed an emergency root canal and my dad wouldn’t loosen the purse strings that my mother finally admitted that something was wrong. She stole a credit card while my dad was sleeping and took my sobbing brother to the dentist. My dad took one look at Ramsay’s puffy, numbed face and knew what she had done.

And that’s when we ran.

After a few weeks we’d overstayed our welcome on friends’ couches so we spent nights at the bus depot, pretending we were just early for our ride. No matter how desperate things got, my mother, who had been dependent on my father for far too long, remained totally and hopelessly unable to find a way to make ends meet.

So I figured it out.

I started small. The first thing was a bottle of vitamins. I found a receipt on the ground and read it for something to do. Then, at the bottom, I saw the words: Receipts required for returns within fourteen days. So I got an idea. I went to the store, I stole the vitamins, and then I returned them with my receipt. Twenty bucks. Easy.

It escalated fast, because twenty dollars won’t feed and house a family of three. Neither Ramsay nor I were going to school by that point, so we had nothing but time on our hands, and soon enough we were making hundreds of dollars a day. Then it occurred to me that I could “return” things for store credit if I didn’t have receipts. That meant the whole store was up for grabs.

By the time I was seventeen I’d made more than seventy thousand dollars. Enough to get us a cheap apartment and groceries, and earn myself a twenty-three month sentence at the Whitehead Women’s Correctional Facility in southern Washington. I was young and terrified, but also relieved. No more stealing. No more worrying about my dad finding us. And no more watching my brother stifle his depression with heroin.

Six months after I went away, he overdosed.

Three months after that, my mother, truly alone for the first time in her life, moved in with the next man who was nice to her and stopped talking to me.

After finishing my GED, one of the prison counselors told me about the Holsom program, and with my expectations carefully low, I applied.

And got accepted.

I was released nine months early for good behavior, hopped on a bus, and started school. For the first year, I kept my head down, did my job, studied my ass off, and tried to be invisible.

In year two, I met Jerry. Never in my life would I have imagined that a guy from a nice family, with a good heart and dreams of being a doctor, would be interested in me. But Jerry saw something that had been hidden by too many rough years, a hopeful side of myself I’d forgotten existed. And the more we hung out, the more I fell for him. The more I believed in him, the more I believed in myself and believed that the life I was pretending I had could actually be mine.

Then Aidan came along.

The reminder makes my chest hurt.

It doesn’t help that this interview is taking place in the town of Chester, just a few miles from where I grew up. From where my father still lives, as far as I know. From where my brother is buried. The thought makes me ill, and when we arrive at the interview site I lurch out of the car and gasp in air like I’d been under water for the past half hour. One of my ear buds falls out, making it possible to hear Aidan’s concerned, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I snap, jerking away from the warm feel of his hand on my back and forgetting my vow not to speak to him.

He holds up his hands defensively. “Okay, sorry. I didn’t know you were sick.”

I straighten and run my hands through my hair, composing myself. “I’m not. Let’s just do this. Which house is it?”

We’re in a brand new subdivision, the gravel-covered road lined on either side with half-finished homes, their frames and guts exposed to the elements. Construction vehicles rumble at intermittent intervals, pouring concrete and digging holes, dumping enormous loads of garbage into dumpsters.

“I think it’s that one,” Aidan says, pointing to the house on our left. “He said he had a yellow truck.”

The driveway is just a dirt path criss-crossed with deep tire treads, and we pass a yellow pickup truck with Lindo Construction stenciled on the door. Through the wood frames I can see half a dozen guys in construction hats milling around, some carrying lumber, one consulting a tablet, a couple drinking coffee and chatting.

“Which one is Lindo?” I ask.

“I don’t see him.” At that moment, his phone beeps with an incoming message. He pulls it out of his pocket and squints at the screen. “He’s ten minutes away.”

I scowl. “Awesome.”

I start back to the car, hearing Aidan’s footsteps follow behind me. I was planning to get in to wait, but at the last minute I lean against the hood and cross my arms, figuring it’ll be easier to ignore Aidan out here than in a confined space.

“Lindo was kind of like my mentor first year,” he says, copying my stance. I wish he wouldn’t stand so close. I wish he didn’t still look like everything I shouldn’t want, but do. I wish he hadn’t invited me to that wedding, slept next to me in that bed, and never tried to take advantage.

“I don’t care.”

“He was my only friend for a while. Then I met Wes, T.J., Brix. You.”

“We’re not friends.”

He carries on as though I hadn’t spoken. “I came to Holsom because it was an opportunity, you know? I didn’t trust that it could be real. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Lindo recognized it right away. He said if I did that I’d spend so much time checking over my shoulder that I’d miss seeing all the possibilities in front of me. It wasn’t easy, but eventually I started believing that I could make it work at Holsom.”

I take in the half-finished houses going up around us, sketches of dreams that will forever be out of reach if I lose focus. And I can’t lose focus. I won’t. Not for Aidan and his tattoos and his too-soft hair. Not for his apology or his donut.

My mom lost focus. Ramsay lost focus.

I won’t.

“If I’d seen you that first day,” Aidan continues, “I never would have looked twice. Not because you’re not hot, but because I never would have expected you to look back.”

I felt that way about everyone I encountered first year, too.

“I don’t know how it happened, Aster, but I started believing. And when I saw you the day I moved in with Jerry, I didn’t even think about it. I just wanted you, and I was willing to do anything to have you. It was like the new me and the old me, working together for the first time.”

“Shut up, Aidan.” It’s hard to get the words out. How many times had my mother forgiven my father, made excuses for him? I tell myself to stay calm, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Aidan’s not supposed to be honest and forthcoming; he’s supposed to be the smug, lying asshole who smugly lied to me.

Footsteps on gravel have us turning to see a huge mountain of a man in a straining white T-shirt approach. Lindo Construction is printed across his chest in huge yellow letters, and a grin stretches his face when he sees Aidan. It’s hard not to laugh when he wraps Aidan in a hug that almost makes him disappear, his face crushed between the other man’s pecs.

“Aidan Shannon Shaw!” the man bellows, thumping Aidan on the back so hard he grunts.

I’m grinning now, and not because Aidan sounds like he’s in pain, but because his middle name is Shannon.

“Too long, man! Too long!” He releases Aidan, who staggers back, face flushed.

“Hey, Lindo. Thanks for meeting with us.”

“No need to thank me.”

Aidan waves in my direction. “This is, uh, Aster.”

Lindo’s eyebrows fly up. “This is Aster?”

I’ve got my hand halfway extended to shake, but now I freeze. He’s heard of me?

“Aster!” Lindo booms, stepping forward and folding me in the same bone-crushing hug he’d used on Aidan. I feel like a cartoon witch, legs twitching as I’m pinned to his hard chest. Then he releases me and steps back, beaming down as he studies my face. “So this is the girl, huh?” he says. To me he adds, “I tried to get this kid to quit smoking every day that first year, and he wouldn’t budge. Five seconds with you and he’s given up the habit.”

The news takes me by surprise. I knew Aidan was trying to quit; I didn’t know it had anything to do with me. Not that it changes anything. I still hate him.

Lindo smiles. “Looks like he finally met his match.”