Pieces of Me (13 page)

I was pretty sure those were the wrong words, but what the hell did it matter? The train wheels went around, and we finally made it to the store.

I stopped in the empty lot behind the thrift store and let Dylan slip off my back. Then I pulled off my backpack.

“Why are we here?” he asked as we walked around the building.

“I can't carry you all the time,” I said. “We need a wagon, a cart, something.”

“A wagon,” he said.

“Let's see what there is first,” I told him as I reached for the door handle.

What there was, was nothing. No wagons. No wire shopping carts I'd seen some people at Pax House with. I would have been happy with a skateboard. We came out and I kicked the garbage can just outside of the door. Dylan looked at me wide-eyed, and I knew I'd gone too far.

I bent down to his level. “I shouldn't have done that,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“Are you mad at me?” he asked.

So did I say,
Yes, I'm mad because you won't walk and I
can't get anything done and I have to carry you all over this
freakin' city
? How many times had I heard,
This is your
fault, Maddie
?

I took a breath. I let it out, took another one and did the same thing. Didn't make me feel one bit less pissed. “I'm not mad at you, kiddo,” I said. “I'm mad because we couldn't find a wagon. And I'm mad because my feet are tired.” I reached over and pushed his hair away from his face, and suddenly it wasn't so hard to smile at him. I held out my hand. “Let's go.”

We walked around the building so we could cut across the empty lot. The Dumpster at the back door was filled to the top, and there was a pile of stuff stacked beside it. Broken things, damaged things that no one could use. It made me mad that people thought it was okay to donate crap. There was a baby mattress with the foam sticking out, two plastic chairs with the seats cracked up the middle and some kind of a stand on wheels with the top broken and splintered.

Wheels.
I turned and walked back to the pile of junk. “Look at this,” I said to Dylan.

“It's broken.”

“I know.” I tipped the stand sideways to look underneath. Yes! The sides had been screwed on. So was it okay to take it? Should I ask or just pick it up? I stood there trying to make up my mind when the back door opened and a man came out carrying a table that was missing a leg.

He smiled at me.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Is all of this garbage?”

“'Fraid so,” he said.

I pointed at the stand. “Would it be okay if I took that?”

He shrugged. “Sure.” He reached over and lifted the stand away from the Dumpster, setting it in front of me. “I don't think you can glue the top,” he said. “I think you'll need a whole new piece of wood.”

The bottom shelf, with the wheels, looked big enough to hold Dylan. “I don't want the top or the sides,” I said.

He tipped the stand on its side and looked underneath. “That's easy enough,” he said. “Just a couple of screws on each side. Want me to take them off?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

He picked up the cart and carried it over to the door. We followed him. I grinned at Dylan. Maybe we had a solution after all.

The man set the stand down on the concrete floor. “Gimme a sec,” he said. He disappeared around a long metal clothing rack. In a minute he was back with a couple of screwdrivers in his hand. It took him no time to get the sides off. “There you go.”

I bent down and moved the wheeled platform across the floor. “That should work,” I said.

“What do you want it for?” the man asked.

“I want something to pull him around on. I was looking for a wagon, but you don't have any.”

He shook his head. “Nah, we almost never get stuff like that.” He studied the platform for a minute. “How're you gonna pull it?”

I hadn't exactly thought about that. I rubbed my aching shoulder with one hand. “I don't know. Fasten a rope to it somehow, I guess.”

He held up a finger. “Hang on.” He went around the racks again and pushed a large cardboard box out from underneath with his foot. He bent to check inside, then stood up and looked around. “Kevin,” he yelled.

“What?” a voice answered from the far side of the space.

“Where'd we put those straps?”

“Hooks on the back wall,” the voice called back.

The man headed for the end wall of the room and was back in a minute carrying a couple of long, thin leather straps. “I don't know what the heck these are for,” he said. “Some of the stuff people bring in.” He shook his head.

The leather slid through the screw holes with no problem. He knotted the ends together underneath so the strap made a looped handle. Then he smiled at Dylan. “Have a seat. Let's give it a test drive.”

I figured Dylan wouldn't want to, but I was wrong. He sat down, holding on to the sides with both hands while the man pulled him across the floor and back. Dylan was grinning.

The man handed me the strap. “Try it, just to be sure.”

It was ten times better than carrying him. “Thank you so much,” I said.

“Hey, no problem,” he said with a smile. “It's a lot better than seein' that stuff end up at the dump. I'd stick to the sidewalk though. I don't think it'll go so good on the gravel.”

I nodded and thanked him again.

I didn't have to pull on Dylan's arm to get him across the lot. Now he was pulling on me, keen to get back on his train, as he called it. We made it back to the room without a problem. I thought about going back out with the laundry. My shoulders hurt, and I had a blister on the bottom of my right foot. I sat on my “bed” and watched Dylan pull Fred back and forth, and then Q was home with pizza for supper. Dylan had to show him how the train worked, so the pizza got a ride to the bathroom and back.

The pizza was cold, but so was the bottle of water Q had brought along. I'd rather eat cold pizza than drink warm water.

“Leftover from lunch?” I asked.

Q was beside me on the bed, his long legs stretched across the floor. “Yeah, some of the guys ordered it. I rescued this before it went in the garbage. Water too.”

Dylan was giving Fred another ride. “He needs milk,” I said. “And we don't have any way to keep it.”

“Can you just buy a little thing of it for him, like at lunch?” Q asked. “By the way, what did you do for lunch?”

I took out one of the apples, and he pulled out his knife and gave it to me. “Bag lunches at St. Paul's,” I said. I leaned across Q's legs and gave a chunk of apple to Dylan.

“I like his train.”

I cut another chunk of apple and gave it to Q. “I had to do something,” I said. “He's too heavy to carry, and when we were going to St. Paul's, he wouldn't walk.”

Q reached for his jacket and pulled something out of the inside pocket. “Here,” he said.

It was a bag full of pennies. Maybe five dollars. “Where did you get this?” I said.

“Some of the guys play Texas Hold'em at lunch. It's only for pennies. But I got lucky. Why don't you use it to get milk for Dylan?”

Dylan had given up on the train for now and was trying to get the bag full of blocks open. Q crawled over to help. I stayed where I was. I was glad to have the money to get milk for the kid, but five dollars' worth of pennies was heavy. And how could I pull him to the grocery store and back and get stuff washed and go get a library card? My shoulders hurt. The blister on my foot had bled through my last pair of semi-clean socks.

Dylan was making a tower out of the blocks. It looked in danger of falling down at any second. Q slid back along the floor and reached for the bottle of water. He looked over at me, then set the bottle down and swung around, putting both hands on my bent knees. “What is it, Maddie?” he asked.

“How is this going to work?” I said. “How do we take care of him and get enough money to get out of here?” Then I said the thing that had been in the back of my head all day. “Maybe we made a mistake.”

Q shook his head. “No, we didn't,” he said, keeping his voice low so Dylan wouldn't hear. “He was living in a van with four other people. With a piece of shit for a father. I promise this is one hell of a lot better.”

“I suck at this,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck again. “I got pissed off at him. I pretty much dragged him up the street by one arm.”

“And you made sure he had something to eat and you got him toys. You didn't hit him.”

“No,” I said.

“You didn't just leave him somewhere and walk away.”

I'd thought about it for a second, but I hadn't done it. I shook my head.

“Q, c'mon,” Dylan called.

Q squeezed my knees. “You're about a hundred times better than what he'd get in foster care. We're going to get out of here. It's okay. I have a plan.” He went back to Dylan then, just in time for the tower to sway and fall over. I didn't want to give Dylan to someone who wouldn't take care of him. I looked at the blocks all over the floor. That's what my life felt like right now, pieces all over the place.

eleven

Doing stuff with Dylan was a lot harder than doing stuff by myself. He got tired. He got bored. He got annoying. It was work sometimes not to scream at him. The “train” was a help, but I still had to pull it. I had to figure out lunch every day. I started buying little cartons of milk at a gas station convenience store a couple of blocks away. It was a lot easier than walking to the grocery store every day, and they didn't seem to mind the pennies. Every few days, Q usually had more of them.

One day he came home with a book about poker. The cover was torn, and some of the pages were curling like they'd gotten wet. Q held up the book with a grin. “Only cost me a quarter,” he said.

For a second, I wanted to grab the book from his hand and smack him with it. I still hadn't gotten to the library. I missed my math books. But that wasn't Q's fault.

A couple of days later, after we'd eaten—it was a fancy hotel-food night—Q said, “I gotta go back out.”

“Goddard's making you work in the dark?” I said.

“No. I'm going to play poker.”

There were so many things I wanted to say, but Dylan was right there, playing with Fred in a tent we'd made from a blanket and the broom handle.

“We have to pay for this place tomorrow,” I said finally.

Q was lacing up his boots. “I know,” he said. He stopped, reached into his pocket and handed me five twenties. “Here. Hang on to that, and you don't have to worry.”

“I didn't mean I thought you'd lose the money,” I said. Okay, so that's what I had thought, but now it seemed pretty crappy to say so.

He finished tying his boot and stood up. Dylan was inside the tent. Q wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against my chest. “Maddie, I'm good at this,” he said. “I play the guys at lunchtime and I win way more than I lose. You know that.”

Based on the bags of pennies, that was right.

“I need to work up into some of the games with higher stakes. It could be our way out of here, our house in the country. A different life.”

I didn't want a house in the country. That was what Q wanted. I wanted to go to school. I wanted to be a doctor, although I didn't think much about that anymore. “What if you lose?”

His smile was cocky. “I'm not going to lose. But you've got the rent money, so we're safe.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Dylan couldn't see, and then he kissed me on the mouth. “For luck,” he said.

He let go of me, poked his head in the tent to say goodbye to Dylan and then he was gone.

I put Dylan to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I cranked the radio and listened to it for a while. I kept going to the door to watch for Q. Finally I went out on the landing so I could see down the stairs to the street. I left the door open so I could hear Dylan if he woke up.

I'd been leaning on the railing for a few minutes when someone unlocked the bottom door and started up the stairs. I was about to go back inside when I saw that it was a woman, maybe about as old as my mother. She had curly brown hair sticking out from under a baseball cap, and she was a bit shorter than me. She was carrying two cloth shopping bags filled with food. I wondered where she'd been grocery shopping so late.

She smiled at me and set the bags down. “Hi,” she said. “I'm Lucy. I live at the end of the hall.”

The only other people I'd met had been old—two women and a man. They gave me timid smiles when we passed on the stairs, but that was it. Seeing them always scared me. Would I still be here when I was old?

“I'm Maddie.” I knew Q thought we should keep to ourselves, but I just didn't want to tonight.

“The little guy with the blond hair, he's yours, right? Your brother?”

She made “your brother” a question, and I nodded. I didn't look old enough to be Dylan's mother, and I couldn't exactly say no, his parents abandoned him in the parking lot at the mall.

Lucy reached down into one of the bags and held out a large jar of peanut butter. “If you keep it between the windows, it'll stay cool but you can still spread it.”

I shook my head. “No. I can't take your food.”

“I have a ton of stuff,” she said, still holding out the peanut butter. Then her expression changed. “Oh, hey, don't worry. I didn't pay for it.”

“You stole it?” I blurted.

She laughed. “No. I'm a scavenger.”

“You mean you go through the garbage?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

When I'd stayed at Pax, there were some people doing that.

Lucy held out the peanut butter again. “Take it, please. It wasn't even in the garbage. It was in a box on the ground. I have four jars.”