Property of the State (4 page)

1.6: Worse Than I Thought

I have no idea how Katz Learning Annex came to exist. It's a Portland Public Schools magnet, like some hippies staged a sit-in back in the dark ages and no one noticed they never left. For one thing, Katz doesn't give out normal grades. You either Meet Course Criteria, Exceed Course Criteria, or Underperform—MEU, the Katz Meow, they call it. Vomit. If you underperform, you can appeal to a committee and half the time, talk your way into at least an
M
. According to legend, Yancy Krokos once pushed three
U
s to
E
s with the help of a PowerPoint presentation and a scorching guitar solo.

Katz is the kind of place where you're as likely to hear Russian, Mandarin, or Japanese as English. A lot of classes are open attendance, which means you only have to show up for tests. Friday afternoons are early release. Half your day you might work on your own, which can mean almost anything—Sketch Echols spent a month photographing “texture” around the building for some kind of art project. Denise Grover wrote a thriller about Rosalind Franklin and the discovery of DNA for her life-science requirement. The system is so loose some people skate all trimester, then blast through twelve weeks of coursework in a long weekend fueled by cupcakes and Monster drinks.

But show up late for Day Prep—what normal schools call homeroom—and Cooper ropes you into the corral for a stern lecture about responsibility. Six minutes or sixty makes no difference. I'm already late, so I stop for coffee.

Uncommon Cup is medium busy, the tail-end of rush hour, but Marcy has my order ready when I get to the front of the line.

“Double shot with two lumps, J-dawg.”

She hands me a miniature cup on a saucer, the raw sugar nuggets on the side along with a tiny spoon. “Thanks, Marcy. Can I get a couple of chocolate donuts?”

“Sure. What happened to your face?”

“Narwhal attack.”

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”

When I turn around, I nearly collide with Trisha. “Jo-o-o-oey.” She draws the word out, like she's pronouncing it for the first time. “Did you get my text?”

“Yeah. I figured I'd see you at school.”

“I didn't think you'd show.”

Why wouldn't I? I never miss. Whatever Mrs. Petty's plans, I'm not going to make things easy by skipping. More to the point, how would Trisha know anything was up? Cooper can be a pain in the ass, but at least he gets confidentiality. “I'm just running late.”

“Your clothes are wet.”

“The dryer cycle wasn't finished.”

“You want to sit down?”

“Um…” I don't…I do. I don't know what I want to do. I'm not surprised Trisha is here. She's got the Katz Meow dialed in, knows exactly when to show up for class and when to dance the Monster Shuffle. A café offsite is the perfect setting to compose sestinas or read the latest Jacqueline Woodson novel. “For a minute, maybe.”

She leads me to a table next to a big fish tank built into the wall. Trisha's round eyes are shimmering amber. Her mouth is shaped like a heart. When she talks to you she stands with her heels together and her hands clasped beneath her breasts. It's hard not to stare.

But that isn't why I like her. I like her because she doesn't treat me like I'm a bug in a jar even though I only own three changes of clothing and live with strangers. A foster herself, she made me on my first day at Katz. The difference is she's been in her placement for years. Her foster parents, the Voglers, seem to like her.

Now, as the fish flit around in the tank beside us, she inspects my face. “You look like Philip.”

“It's nothing. I fell.”

“On what? A claw hammer?”

“My desk.”

“Didn't you go to the hospital?”

“Of course I went to the hospital.”

She looks unconvinced. Not that I blame her. “What?”

“It's just…They gave Philip a fancy protective mask. You got a poorly applied Yoda Band-Aid.”

“Awesome, my Band-Aid is.”

“Okay. Whatever.” She shakes her head. “I guess we know what living in the big house on the hill buys you at the emergency room.” The scorn in her voice is impossible to miss—Trisha doesn't like Philip. She watches the fish for a moment. “I'm still in shock about what's happening.”

It takes me a second to realize she's shifted gears. Not even Trisha would be shocked by Mrs. Petty pulling me out of Katz. Especially if she knew what was inside the battery compartment of my laptop.

“Did I miss something?”

“Where on earth have you been?”

Hiding out at Philip's
is not a response that will score me any points. “Nowhere.”

“You don't know about Duncan?”

“What about him?”

She studies me for a long time. I can't read her expression. “He's in a coma. They don't know if he's going to make it.”

“Wait.”

“That's why I texted you, dipshit.” Her lips purse. “You know, Joey, every once in a while you're allowed to communicate with other human beings.”

I break one of my donuts into pieces on a napkin. “What happened?”

“No one knows. After he blew up Philip's nose yesterday, he left school. They found him on Forty-ninth. Some woman walked out her front door around one-thirty and saw him in the middle of the street in a puddle of blood.”

In the fish tank, bubbles emerge from a plastic treasure chest.

“I don't understand what kind of person runs over someone and then drives away.”

I pulverize the second donut.

“Everyone's gone crazy at school. No one's getting anything done. When I left, so many people were jammed in the office asking questions, I think Mrs. An was going to lose it.”

“Wasn't Mrs. Huntzel helping?” She may be a volunteer, but Mrs. Huntzel has better attendance than Cooper.

“I didn't see her.” Trisha makes a face, and I regret the question.

One day near the end of last school year, Trisha stopped to chat while I waited next to the BMW for Philip and Mrs. Huntzel. Trisha bent down to peer through the windshield at the leather seats. “Must be nice,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“Fancy car, mansion, houseboy. And all this free time to shadow her precious princeling around school too? What's that about?” She smirked at me, then raised up suddenly.

“I won't be judged by the likes of you.” Mrs. Huntzel had materialized behind us, Philip on her heels. “Step away from the car.”

Trisha's expression went dark but she didn't move until Philip pushed past. He barely touched her, but Trisha wasn't having it. “Hey, watch it!”

“You heard my mother, graham cracker.”

Leave it to Philip to come up with a goofball burn that made no sense. Trisha seemed to get it, though. She threw him a glare hot enough to melt steel. He ignored her and got in the car. Mrs. Huntzel looked at me. “Are you coming, Joey?” All I could do was look at Trisha apologetically and climb into the backseat.

My employment situation is a topic Trisha and I don't discuss.

In the tank, the fish suddenly scatter, a cue. “I gotta get going.”

“You could come over.”

I shake my head. “I can't.” It's bad enough I'm late.

“It's okay, Joey. Mom and Dad are both at work.”

Trisha and I spent some time together over the summer: coffee, movies, even a couple of poetry readings. But the only time I was at her house was in August, the day I built her hidey-hole. Ever since, Trisha has been trying to get me to come back. She doesn't understand why I won't. Thinks it's the house, which smells like dying flowers and bug spray. I've never told her about how Mr. Vogler fronted me in his driveway as I left and said if I returned, he'd speak with Mrs. Petty about my interference. “We're trying to help Trisha move past all this. You know how it is, Joey.” I didn't, not really.
All this? Interference?
His voice was friendly, but I caught the undertone of threat. Mr. Vogler has been around the foster system for eons. If he wanted to, he would know exactly how to wreck my Plan. Get me kicked out of Katz, or worse.

“I only meant to get breakfast.”

She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. We sit there, Trisha stroking my palm with her thumb. Her amber eyes capture me, and in that moment I feel like I could lose a day just looking into them. Neither of us has touched our coffee. My donuts lie in ruins.

“The fish are like us.” She looks at the tank. “They're always moving, but they can't get away.”

I wonder if she has a plan, or if she's like every other foster I know. Waiting for the next bucket of shit to spill into her life. A lot of kids in her situation—long-term placements—are adopted. That the Voglers haven't made the arrangement permanent probably means something.

“I could show you what I hid in the space you built for me.” Her gaze returns to me, liquid and disconcerting. Like the way she looked at me when I showed her how to secure the finial at the peak of her headboard, concealing the hollow space I'd augured out inside.

I look away. “Keep it secret. Even from me.”

“Joey.” She draws my name out again. “No one expects you to go to school today. Everyone knows you're Duncan's friend.”

Right.

In the last twenty-four hours, I've been pegged with Wayne's smut addiction, got my face smashed for pointing it out, witnessed the pervo piss his pants, and learned Duncan Fox got run down in the street. Yet somehow Trisha Lee is what knocks me off balance.

“I'm sorry.” I need to stay at Katz to keep The Plan on track. “I gotta get to school.”

0.7: Private Lunchroom

I'm not much of a chess player. Hell, I don't even
like
chess.

Yet when I came to Katz, first thing I did was join the Chess Club. I went to the meetings after school twice a week. Played every day at lunch. According to club rules you had to log a minimum of six games a week (Sunday off for good behavior). The serious players managed a lot more. Philip often played four games at once. During my brief tenure with the club, he whipped my ass at least twice a week while defending his position as first board against all comers.

But it was worth it, because membership in Chess Club got you something no one else at Katz had.

Access to the private lunchroom.

Katz is the ninth school I've attended. Freshman year alone, I moved three times. One morning, a week into the school year, I opened the bathroom door to find my foster father dead on the toilet. Heart attack. The dude did like his bacon. A situation like that means emergency placement—wherever there's a spot. I found myself twenty miles away—Lents to Forest Grove—with nothing but the few things I could stuff into my suitcase.

Six weeks later Mrs. Petty put me in what she thought would be a more permanent home. Northeast this time, Parkrose. New neighborhood, new parents. New school. The one good thing to come out of that placement was my foster dad introduced me to carpentry. Mr. Rieske was a cabinetmaker—had a workshop out back bigger than the house. Gave me my first hammer. But come Valentine's Day, my one decent placement ended when he drove into the concrete divider at the Gateway exit on I-84. Mrs. Rieske's neck was broken by the steering wheel. He bled out before EMTs could arrive. Lucky me, I was at the house with two other fosters and a sitter. Next day, I found myself in North Portland, sharing a bedroom with a bald kid who masturbated to a photo album filled with snapshots of—I think—his biological parents. At least I got to stay at Parkrose High School. The long bus ride each way was a welcome escape from the mess at the house.

Except, fuck, the noise, noise,
noise
. Trisha says I'm the Grinch, but I honestly don't understand how everyone else deals with the freaking noise. Since most of my placements have been in multi-kid households, I move from chaos to cacophony. At home, it's TV, shouting, fapping, weeping. At school, it's lockers slamming, heels clacking and squeaking against tile floors, and unending jabber. Always the jabber. In the hallways, the bathrooms, under our desks during lockdown drill. No one ever…shuts…
up
. The cafeteria is the worst. So when I learned about the private dining room, I was ready to commit to a life of chessery, or whatever you call it.

By February of my sophomore year, the Katz Learning Annex was something of a last resort for me.

I'd just been kicked out of Central Catholic for calling a staff member a dried-up hag in desperate need of a lay. How was I supposed to know she was a nun? She looked like an English teacher. The distinction was lost on the principal and my foster parents. Ciao, Natrones. Hello, Boobies.

Normally, I'd go to whatever school was in my foster home's neighborhood. Central Catholic was a special case, a setting where I would be “both challenged and strictly supervised.” Fail. With Katz, Mrs. Petty wanted to try something new, and somehow had the muscle to walk me past the usual application process. Maybe they had a Sad Lil' Orphan exception.

We started in Cooper's corral, where I got the standard sales pitch. Something about diversity and intellectual freedom. I didn't listen. “Alternative educational setting” is just a fancy way of saying “you're on your own, sucker.” Fine. Sold. Now where am I going to sleep tonight?

But nothing is ever simple. “The Katz philosophy is based on a foundation of empowerment through critical thinking, but critical thinking requires an informed mind.” I had to take the tour.

As Mr. Cooper led Mrs. Petty and me through the halls, he rattled off empowering factoids. The school—mystery of mysteries—had classrooms, a library, a media center, and computer lab. Even a gym—an echoey, faintly rancid chamber not much bigger than a classroom. Sports aren't really a thing at Katz. There are no extracurricular athletics, so the facilities are only the minimum necessary to meet state PE requirements. Cooper sounded apologetic, as if he secretly wished Katz had a shot at the state basketball championship.

“We do compete in a number of areas. Our forensics squad is active, and the chess team did very well last year.”

Whatever. I was more interested in the locations of the fire extinguisher cabinets and alarm switches.

As he yapped, I stared sightlessly into the cafeteria, or, as Cooper called it, the Commons, “where students relax and refresh over the midday meal.” I happened to be watching as a girl with amber eyes exited the food line and slipped on a puddle of spilled milk. She caught herself—wipeout averted—but I might have reacted when her gaze met mine. Maybe my jaw dropped as Cooper happened to mention the Chess Club, because suddenly he got the idea that I gave a rat's ass.

“You should come meet the team.”

Please. But he marched us across the Commons into the narrow hallway which led to the gym. For a second I thought he was taking us back there, but then he stopped at a closed door and swung it wide. Inside, nine or ten kids sat at small square tables eating lunch and playing chess. Cooper spoke to a stout, sandy-haired kid at a far table. “Duncan, we have a new student considering Katz. He's interested in the club.”

I wasn't, but I
was
interested in the room. Small, lots of natural light, two smoke detectors, and—best of all—
quiet
. Katz isn't a big school, but the Commons thrummed with typical, toothaching din. In the calm of this hidden chamber, my powers of critical thinking felt instant empowerment.

“What's the story here?”

It was my first question of the visit, which not only inspired a giddy fit in Cooper, but even got Mrs. Petty's attention.

“This room was the instructors' lounge in the days before Katz was Katz. Since ours is a student-oriented program, we felt it was more appropriate to resource the space for student activities. The chess club holds daily practice here during lunch.”

Duncan, clearly not thrilled by the interruption, stood. Cooper introduced him as club president.

“You play?”

“Sure.”

“You any good?”

Now that was a question. I didn't know. Maddie taught me to play when I was six years old. She used chess as a way for the children to earn privileges and develop our little pea-brains. A game got me a half-hour of PlayStation or TV. After I learned the moves, the stakes went up. Win a game to earn full-hour, but lose and get nothing. The woman was nuts. Mad Maddie, the older fosters called her. Still, I picked up some chess basics. Even beat her a few times before my stash of half-rotten mac-and-cheese in the back of my closet earned me a new placement.

Duncan inspected me. Easy to guess what he saw. No family, Walmart knock-offs. An Other. Duncan Fox was well-fed, well-clothed, cocky. His teeth gleamed inside their Invisalign braces. His hair had never been cut in the kitchen.

I looked him in the eye and answered his question. “Good enough to beat your ass.”

We both knew I wasn't talking about chess. But Mr. Cooper clapped me on the shoulder and suggested I sit down for a game while he and Mrs. Petty went off to talk details.

The others came around to watch. A change of pace, I suppose. Duncan won in minutes. Then he stood up and brushed me off with a wave of his hand. “We don't need you.”

But one of the others shook his head. “You can't stop him from joining.” Philip Huntzel, who chewed carrots as he watched the game, open-mouthed and intense. His teeth were bigger than his eyes and he had a high-pitched, buzzy voice. Elf features straight out of
The Hobbit
. Aspergers was my guess. Reid hates it when I diagnose people almost as much as I hate it when he diagnoses me.

Duncan grumbled something about how they could do without the deadweight, but Philip shrugged.

“Read the bylaws.”

Anywhere else, Philip would be lucky to be merely ignored. In the Katz chess room, he was Jesus. Later, I'd learn he went undefeated his freshman year in tournament play until the state championship. This year, as a sophomore, he's expected to win it all. Not sure what he saw in me then. Maybe another weirdo. Or maybe it was part of some rivalry with Duncan. When he spoke, Duncan backed down, but I could see the bottled-up rage behind Duncan's eyes. None of my business.

Besides, I was focused on the lunchtime peace and quiet before me, all for the low, low price of a game of chess.

Things were looking up.