Chapter 10

Animal

Merck met with officers and conversed with them outside the toll both office while we waited for an ambulance.

When Martha had to go back to her shift, T spoke up.

“If I go to the hospital, they’ll want to know information.”

She didn’t want to be found out. The homeless thing. The fact that she was working a loophole in the system.

The police scared her. Reporting scared her. The hospital terrified her.

Names. Address. Phone number.

It all made her more anxious than her not being able to move her arm. Scared her more than whatever they’d done to her.

Her hair was caught on her bloodied lip. I reached up and pulled it gently and tucked it behind her ear. Her brown eyes were wide on me. She was always so in control. I’d never seen her this petrified before.

The ambulance pulled up. The lights filled the office, bouncing off the walls. T was panicking.

“There was a kid in one of my early foster homes. He wouldn’t talk, not when he didn’t want to anyway. They said he was…” I thought for a few seconds as I pulled the term up from the depths of my memory. “Selective mute. That was it. He could talk, but not when he was scared. You could be that.”

She nodded. “I like that.”

“I’ll try to stay with you, okay?”

Merck opened the office door for the paramedics.

They were respectful when T tried to get closer to me.

“You know her?”

I looked at her face.

“I’ve seen her around.” I was vague. When in doubt, vague bought me time in the past.

I watched Merck narrow his eyes. He’d want to know what the hell this was about. I widened mine slightly to let him know that I had my reasons.

The paramedics were very kind and gentle. When I didn’t own up to knowing T, in hopes of keeping her a mystery, I was no longer able to assert my claim to be next to her.

The paramedics loaded her into the ambulance. I tugged on Merck’s sleeve and pointed to his patrol car.

“What the hell, buddy?” Merck started the car and followed the ambulance. He put his lights on, too, so we could follow just as swiftly.

And then I let it pour out. I told him that T was my friend and how she didn’t want to be in the system. I told him that we had to find a place for her to stay that worked and that I needed to be in that hospital with her.

I watched as he shifted in his seat, his gear squeaking and clacking.

“That’s serious.” He was plainly running through ways to process what I’d told him.

The lights flooded the sides of the road as I waited to see what he would say. I knew hospitals were militant about shit. I exhaled, worried that I’d made a mistake.

“I know a lawyer. A chick that works for homeless kids’ rights. I can call her in the morning. I can stay near T and you can stay near me at the hospital. For now. Do I have to call your foster parents?”

Merck slid the blinker in the right direction to follow the ambulance.

“Nah, they won’t answer the phone.” I kept my gaze forward so I wouldn’t see Merck’s internal struggle on his face.

We were about eight blocks from the hospital when Merck picked up his phone and called his wife.

His side was clear. Her side was, too, because I was close. She was ripping him a new one for not coming home. Accusing him of cheating.

He took the verbal lashing before apologizing a few times and hanging up.

We got to the parking lot, and he put the car in a spot set aside for police. I finally looked at his face, and he at mine. I said sorry without the words for the shit he’d taken for me.

Merck shrugged. “I’d do anything for you, kid.”

That statement opened a whole can of worms. I dropped my gaze and let him escape the obvious. Everything except be my father.

I opened the door as the paramedics opened theirs. T was spooked out of her mind. She had an IV in her arm and bandages wound around a few of her cuts. Her arm was stabilized.

I eased out and stood next to her. “Here.”

The paramedics ignored me, and Merck put his hand on my shoulder to officially escort me into the building.

I was able to grab T’s good hand and hold it. She squeezed me back. We were a train like that all the way to the curtained cubical in the ER.

T

Maybe I loved him more in the moment he stood next to me at the hospital. Consistent. I saw a fire in his eyes to keep me safe and I was feeling so incredibly out of my element. Tender. Where I was normally sharp I felt like I could be breached and I hated it. The men under the bridge had taken a confidence from me that I didn’t even know I valued. But Animal was there like a knight in the night. Someone else that worried about me. His name was branded on my quivering soul. I could be brave again, soon. But right this second he was a brick wall for me.

Animal

T had to get her shoulder reset. The assholes who had attacked her under the toll bridge had dislocated it. She had some deep bruises, but nothing was broken.

That night, after she had a taste of some strong painkillers, the doctor was able to manipulate the bone back into the correct position so she could move her arm.

Merck worked his magic, and I was able to stay with T that evening. T played her part as a newly developed selective mute. The lawyer got a special social worker called, and Merck spoke to her, but there was only so much he could do.

T was assigned to a new foster mom with an amazing reputation. The lawyer had pulled some strings.

I knew T was probably against it all. T had a mom. She told me about her once. It had been a late night. Sometimes when I needed to get away from the toxic environment of the fosters, I snuck out. It wasn’t hard. They didn’t care where I was. At night T and I would meet. She’d steal food, and I’d keep us safe. But one night she told me she still had a mom. I had been confused until she explained how it was.

We were at the old mall, just inside a busted storefront. She was leaning against one wall, me the other.

I’d asked her to tell me why they weren’t together. This was a hard question, and I knew what I was asking. The deepest of secrets.

T was silent for so long, I thought she wouldn’t answer, but then she explained, “If Mom sees me, she goes off her meds. They say I make her too excited. And when she’s excited, she stops taking the pill she’s supposed to. She gets violent. So the one person who loves her most in the world only creeps on her from time to time.”

T shrugged as if that fact was spilled milk. It was so much more. I knew the word “mother” could hurt like a slap. When it was Mother’s Day. When the class was making cards for the soft ladies that got hugs from their kids at the end of the day. And T had one mom.

“How do you not go to her?” It was almost unbelievable.

She pulled an old hospital bracelet from her pocket. It had the name Anastasia on it. “I just don’t. I know what works and I do that. But I only have love for one mom, and that’s the way I plan on keeping it.”

I bowed my head like I was at a funeral. I could hear the pain in her voice, and it felt disrespectful to stare. Maybe she was crying; her words were barely there. It was dark in the empty ghost of a store.

I knew now why she needed an open window or a door left ajar. Part of that was not wanting to be locked in, but the other part was needing to escape and get a fix of her mom. Just a visual. T had to be the strongest person in the world.

The suckiest part of being in the system was the lack of ability to affect your situations. Merck took me home to the fosters’ house when T’s new foster mother arrived to pick her up at the hospital.

Merck apologized for how it all turned out when he dropped me off. I knew he’d tried his best, but I was pretty sure I was a jerk to him. Either way, the fosters didn’t care that I had been gone when I arrived on Sunday morning.

The following day changed just about everything for me. I was busy trying to figure out where T had gone. Finding her actual location would take some work. But when I got ready for school the next morning, I had to pause to answer the doorbell. Merck was there, looking exhausted.

“Hey, get your stuff. Something’s about to go down here, and I want you in my possession when it does.”

Kids in the system know how to pack fast. I was no different. I was still being a punk to Merck because I was fine living with these asshole addicts if I had to.

On my way out, another cop came in to serve a warrant.

The addicts had been caught doing whatever they did to get high. I’d tossed my bags in the passenger side of the cop car and pushed them over to sit.

The fact that I wanted Merck as a dad was going to come up again, and it was going to hurt. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and refused to put on my seat belt. Before Merck could back up, the fosters were in handcuffs on the front steps.

“I had an idea.” Merck turned the heater on as we watched the fosters get marched to another squad car.

“Yeah.” Hope slammed up in the center of my chest, despite me trying to tell myself to be reasonable.

“There’s the home in town. You know the one? Benfell Academy? They have kids that live there. You’d have your own room. Food’s good. You could stay there until you’re eighteen instead of bouncing around so damn much. There’s consistency.”

I looked at my lap. No offer from him to be my family.

“I asked my wife again last night if I could adopt you. She said no. I asked her for a divorce. I told her if she was making me choose between you and her, I would pick you.”

I opened my mouth and slowly looked his way.

“What? You’re surprised? You know how it is with us. I love you.” Merck cleared his throat and looked through the window. “Every time I see you with another situation that turns to crap, it kills me.”

He’d just suggested the home, so as nice as it was to hear the man cared about me like I did him, there was some sort of complication.

The squad car with my now ex-fosters pulled away. The cops were obviously conducting a full-scale warrant by the way they were tearing up the place.

“She had me followed and found out about the affair. Told me she’d ruin my career if I didn’t stay.” Merck punched the dashboard. We sat there listening to the heater. He finally gave me his reasoning. “I need this job. I can watch over you better this way and make sure everything is going in your direction. You will make it out of this screwed-up childhood, so help me God.”

Merck gave me a look of pure fatherhood. There was both agony and selflessness in it. I was smart enough to know that he was right. Having him as my very own police officer would be a help.

I grabbed the older man by the shoulder and squeezed. “In my heart you’re my father.”

Merck put his head back against the headrest. “That means the world to me, buddy. Thank you.”

I took my other hand and patted his arm. I put a fair amount of hope in the man, but that was all he was. A man that I connected with. Maybe we were father and son in a past life. I wasn’t sure.

“I think the home’s a good idea. I like the idea of meals. I’m hungry a lot.”

On the drive over to Benfell Academy, I told Merck about the stupid cheese sandwiches. He cursed up a blue streak about the injustice of it all.

My balance was always twenty dollars no matter how much I ate at school from that day on. Merck made sure I was covered.

I met Sister Mary. She was a fan of Merck’s, and he assured her that I’d be a great addition to the home.

I saw the setup for what it was that night. Sort of a place of last resort. Kids that were too wild to stay with their families, if they had any. The abuse that most of them underwent before they were placed gave a whole new definition to crazy. Humans could be broken beyond repair. Even as kids. Structure was a large part of how the home worked. There were very consistent headcounts and procedures when kids went out of their heads. The people who worked there had to love their job, because getting kicked and spit on were part of the hard days there.

But I knew I could make it work.

I was allowed to attend my regular school as opposed to the instruction they had on site for the other kids. It was like a whole community inside the walls.

I arrived at school and found T in a sling at recess the next damn day.

“Good to see you here. You still in district?” We’d both moved houses and schools a lot, so she knew what I meant.

She nodded with a far-off look in her eye.

“I’m surprised that you’re here. Aren’t you on pain meds and stuff?” I sat next to her on the brick wall.

The car with the lowered body and the same license plate that T had carved into her skin rolled by.

“They want me to stay in my routine.” She was talking slowly and a little slurred.

“What happened? Where’d they place you? Give me an address.” I watched as she swayed.

“I won’t be there long. I’ll be out tonight. She likes all the windows closed so…” She looked at my face as if seeing me for the first time. “Thank you. For what you did under the bridge.”

I nodded. “You’d do the same for me.”

It was true. I trusted her. She was small, but she was feisty as shit.

“The selective mute thing is genius, by the way.” She smirked after the lowered car passed. Like she hadn’t seen it at all. “I should’ve been doing this the whole damn time.”

“You okay, T?” She was off. There had to be repercussions. She was attacked just the night before. She was still bruised up.

“I think if my mom was well, she’d make me chicken soup. And I bet she’d have a soft blanket that smelled like the dryer sheets that she’d wrap around me. And we’d watch Grease together. She’d make me feel safe. And I could sleep on my stomach, not holding onto my stuff, you know? And she’d hum a song I liked.”

I’d never heard T just gush like that. The stuff she wanted was so specific. It was heartbreaking.

“She’d do all that shit, T. It’d be great.”

She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. I looked at her wrist. She still had her hospital band on. My girl wouldn’t roll like that. She liked her personal shit personal. I pulled a blade out of my pocket. T didn’t flinch when I put it near her wrist. I could’ve attributed it to her being on drugs, except as I slid her sweatshirt sleeve out of the way, I saw the remnants of all the other scars.

T looked from the knife to her wrist. This version of my girl was free with her words. “Sometimes I need to see the pain I feel.”

I bowed my head like she had uttered a prayer. Then I flipped it so the blade could slide through the thick plastic. I slipped it into my back pocket so I could take the evidence out of the picture. I knew better than to let the jackholes in this school have the opportunity to dig it out of the trash. It said “Talon Devora”. I was so used to her being my T, seeing her government name was a surprise.

I held open my arms to her. I knew she was a private person, and I had nothing to offer—but a hug seemed right.

She looked at the center of my chest while she filtered the action through the drugs she must have been on.

I held still. T scootched over close and gently put her head over my heart. I carefully put my arms around her, trying to remember where her injuries were so I wouldn’t hurt her.

She let out a moan, but she stayed.

I didn’t tell her it was all going to be okay, because I sucked at lying. I wasn’t old enough to protect her, I mean really. I couldn’t make it so she could stay somewhere safe. I kissed the top of her head.

“Someday, T, you and I are going to have a house on top of a hill, and no one will be able to tell us what to do. We’ll make so much money that we’ll use it to start fires sometimes.”

She murmured something I couldn’t hear. Two minutes later, she was asleep on me. I held her so she wouldn’t lose her balance.

Five minutes later, I had to wake her. Recess was over. It was time to go inside and pretend like math mattered.