Pain & Wastings (2 page)

“A hundred bucks.” There is no way she can guess my middle name.

“You don't have a hundred bucks,” Holly says. “And if you do, you shouldn't.”

“Fine then, you think of something. You won't guess it anyway.”

We lock eyes for a second. There is something strange about the way she's looking at me, like she knows me, only I've never seen her before in my life. “You're bandaged up now,” she says, and the moment passes. “If you want to flip onto your back, you can.”

“Okay.” I gingerly turn over, keeping the ripped-up leg bent. “God, that hurts!”

“Want a pillow under that?” She pulls one from a cubby and stuffs it into a paper case. “Don't straighten it. It'll kill.”

“Yeah.” Why is she being so nice? “Thanks.”

She tucks the pillow under my knee and then sits on the bench beside the cop. She tugs at her stethoscope and just sort of sits there, staring at me.

John turns his head in the driver's seat and peers at us through the partition. “Almost there.”

The chops and static of the ambulance radio sound from the front, mixed in with the classic rock station John has on low. I sit up and look out the window. The people in the cars behind us can't see in, but we can see out. It's raining again. The streetlights slice orange wedges of glow onto the wet roads. The couple in the pickup truck behind us is arguing, their faces twisted in anger. A baby sits on the woman's lap, sucking his thumb and staring up at his parents. He should be in a car seat, and I'm just about to tell the cop he'd do better spending his time writing up people like that rather than babysitting me, but I change my mind, favoring the silence instead.

We pull in to the children's hospital, with its cheery signs and brightly colored emergency room. The last time I was here I'd been picked up, passed out drunk, in the skate park across the street from Harbor House. The time before that for stitches after I got into a fight. Now I'm here for a police dog bite.

I'd rather go to the regular hospital, but
minors have to go to the children's hospital, especially if you're a ward of the state. It's weird to come here for such badass things when most of the patients are just new babies, or little kids playing happily with the toys in the waiting room or clinging tearfully to their parents while they wait to get their boo-boo fixed or fever treated or the marble removed from up their nose.

The cop gets out first. He swaggers in ahead of us to tell them all about my criminal record and to recommend that I have a room to myself so as not to cause trouble or frighten the children. Like I would. In a children's hospital, where bald-headed cancer kids ask you to play snakes and ladders, and busted-up toddlers want you to draw on their casts? I'm not bad. Not
that
bad. I'm not.

Just as Holly is about to jump out and help her partner with the cot, she leans over and says, “I win the bet, you come on a ride-along with me. On a nightshift.”

“And if I win?”

“You win, and I'll buy you a new pair of jeans to replace the ones the dog ruined.”

“They were expensive.”

“And probably stolen, so don't push your luck.” She takes off her gloves and we shake hands. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Mingus.” She doesn't smile when she says it. She stares at me hard. “Ethan Mingus Kirby.”

I look away, all of my thoughts drying up into one dusty tangle and lodging at the back of my throat.

“I knew your mom.”

I glance back. She's still staring. Waiting for me to say something. But I don't know what to say, so I don't say anything at all. I turn my head away.

John opens the back doors. “All set?”

“Sure.”

Holly jumps out without another word, and then they wheel me in and the triage nurse starts in with her questions and assumptions. As they transfer me onto a hospital stretcher, Holly doesn't mention the bet again. She doesn't ask me anything else. She doesn't explain herself either. Or tell me how she knew my mom. She just lets me be. Alone and quiet while we wait for
the doctor, the sound of babies crying, a cartoon playing on the TV in the lobby, my cop escort snapping his gum, his radio squawking.

Break-and-enter, mischief, resisting arrest and vandalism. The vandalism is for Sedan Man's car. He went whining to the police about his hood being crunched in, and they didn't have to work too hard to connect the dots.

“What about my damage, huh?” I ask while Marshall, bleary-eyed and yawning on his third back-to-back shift as Harbor House babysitter, tells me about the charges. “What do I get for having the back of my leg ripped out? And my jeans. A total write-off.”

Marshall yawns. He's got a mug of coffee in front of him, but he hasn't touched it. “What do you get?” he asks, like he doesn't get the question. And then he repeats it, drawing out each word. “What do you get?”

“For the pain and suffering.” I stand up and drop my pants. “Police brutality. For this!”

“Nice underwear,” Marshall says. I'm wearing boxers with happy faces on them. “Is that why you never smile? ‘Cause your underwear smiles for you?”

“Forty stitches for starters.” I do up my belt. “And I think it's infected. And what if I get that flesh-eating disease? We're talking lifetime comp in that case. Lost wages, the full meal deal, man. They pay big-time for police brutality.”

“You'll probably just get time in juvie for being an ass.” Marshall takes a slow sip of his coffee. He pushes himself out of his chair and stands, clutching the mug to his bony chest. “The officer is coming by after school. With your social worker. Be here.”

“My social worker?” I hesitate. “What's Chandra got to do with it?”

“Beats me.” Marshall leaves the room with
a shrug and a yawn. “Go to school. Please. I don't want to come pick you up for shoplifting somewhere because I really, really, really want to sleep.”

Poor Marshall. I'm not being sarcastic either. I do feel sorry for him. He was up all night with Kelly, who came home tweaked right out. Harbor House policy says he's supposed to take her to the hospital when she's all methed up, but she'd been missing all day and half the night, and he was just glad she came home. He's cool like that. Keeping us out of trouble when he can. As for Kelly, she's asleep upstairs. Finally.

School—if you can call a portable full of losers
school
—is the last place I want to be. It's been a week since the roller-coaster climb. Harvir is already in juvie for who knows how long. School was bearable with Harvir there, but now it's so boring it makes me want to poke Captain's eyes out just to generate some excitement. And I like Captain. As far as teachers go, he's the best one we've had this year. It's April, and he's our third. Last year we went through six. We usually place bets on how long they'll last, but no one's
brought up the wager since Captain came at the end of November. No one will say it out loud, but we like him.

Just before English, he comes to the back of the portable, where I'm putting in shelving by the door. He says it's for our shoes, for when it gets really mucky out, but I know it's his way of having me use my math and organizational skills without being obvious. Even though it is kind of obvious. He had Harvir and me plan it all, including a budget for the supplies and everything. Whatever. It's better than working on some stupid workbook.

“Something on your mind?”

“Isn't that your job?” I make a mark on the wall with my pencil. “To put something in there for me?”

He leans against the door. He's huge, probably six and a half feet tall. He makes the portable feel like a dollhouse. He was captain of a minor-league hockey team until he blew his knee. That's why we call him Captain. “Talk to me,” he says.

I tell him about the pig (cop) and sow (social worker) coming after school. He takes it in stride. He's never fazed by the crap we get up to.

“You can't be surprised,” he says when I pause. “You knew something was going to come of it.”

“Silly me. I thought my leg being shredded by a vicious dog was enough.”

Captain shrugs. “I guess not.”

“Can you write me a letter?” I play with the tape measure, not sure if this'll go over well. “Tell them how good I'm doing and everything? Tell them it would be disruptive to my education if I have to go to juvie?”

“I could just photocopy the other three I've written you...” Captain squints at the big calendar on the far wall, “...in the last six weeks. How about that?”

I let the measuring tape snap back into the casing. “It'd have to be a new one.”

“No can do this time.” Captain shakes his head. “Got to draw the line somewhere, buddy.”

“How about you draw the line the next time I ask?”

He levels me with That Look. We've all got it from him enough to know it. That look that says, I know you're smarter than what you've
a)
just done or
b)
just said.

“How about you finish up here and join us for English?”

“Fine.” I chuck the hammer and level into the toolbox. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Take it easy, Ethan.” Captain claps a hand on my shoulder as he heads for his desk.

I bristle. “Don't touch me.” It comes out a low growl, but he hears every word. I'm holding the toolbox in one hand, the handle hard in my clenched fist. I let it drop. It bangs to the floor and spills open, sending tools clanking onto the tiles. The paper bag of nails rips open, an army of them skittering across the floor.

“Pick them up. Every single one of them, Ethan. Now.”

I glance at the nails and then at the door. Get on my hands and knees in front of everybody while they take turns reading out loud from
The Lord of the Flies
, or take off and have the afternoon to myself?

“You pick them up!” I shout. Thankfully, Captain is far enough away from the door that I can get out before he can stop me. I hobble down the stairs and run-limp as fast as I can with my one bad leg slowing me down.

I turn back at the parking lot to see if Captain's following. He's not. He's standing on the top stair, arms folded, just watching me.

It's dark when I finally head back to Harbor House. Marshall is still there. He was off at five, but his relief hasn't shown up yet. He points a painted fingernail at me. Still with the yawns, still with the mug of coffee.

“You blew it.” He's slouched in an easy chair in the living room, watching some stupid reality TV show about fat celebrities. “Chandra wants you to call her.”

“Nice manicure.”

“Kelly,” he flutters his fingers. “It's called
Pink Pom-Poms. She does a good job. Where were you?”

“I got hung up.”

Marshall twists his head over one shoulder to look at me. “Oh yeah?”

“I had to stay late at school.”

“That reminds me.” He turns back to his show. “Captain called too. He says if you have perfect attendance for the next two weeks, he'll pretend today never happened.”

Moving right along to safer topics...I ask, “Where is everybody?”

“Pizza night,” he says with a dismissive flap of his hand. “With that churchy group who thinks all it takes to make you ruffians a bunch of shining lights of God is a couple of large pies with extra cheese and a
G
-rated comedy.”

“Yeah.” I force a laugh. “Suckers.” I back out of the front hall, hoping to make it to the stairs without him remembering all my trespasses, so to speak.

“Hey,” Marshall calls from the living room. “Some paramedic showed up with the cop and Chandra. She the one from that night?”

This stops me in my tracks.
Ethan Mingus Kirby. I knew your mother.

My mouth goes dry. The room spins into darkness.

I am six. I've been crying for so long I'm hoarse. I peed my pajamas because I don't want to go into the bathroom. They're my favorite pajamas, with red fire engines and Dalmatian dogs.

I grip the banister and pull myself back into the moment. I breathe in through my mouth and exhale slowly through my mouth, like Chandra tells me to do when this happens.

I clear my throat. “Is her name Holly?”

“Yeah.” From the hallway I can hear Marshall flipping the channels.

“Then yeah, she was the one that night.”

“She wanted me to give you a message...” The news, a game show, country music. He parks it on a tattoo of gunfire. Tires screech. A woman screams. “She says you owe her. Something about a bet?”

I called Chandra. She's coming today. With the cop. And Holly. They show up all at once and give the neighbors a reason to gawk. Cop car, ambulance and Chandra's 1968 Ford Mustang with the flames airbrushed above the wheel wells. She really is the best sow to have, if you have to have one. She's been mine since I was eight.

“How's the leg?” Holly says as she climbs down from the ambulance. Her partner waves from the driver's seat but doesn't get out.

“Fine.” I turn to Chandra. “What's she doing here?”

“Be glad she's here.” Chandra grabs my file from the mess of paperwork on her front seat. “She might just be your best friend.”

“What do you mean?” I scowl at the cop as he gets out of his car. He's not one of the two from the other night. This one is younger, with spiky black hair and a tattoo peeking out from his shirtsleeve. He drove up in one of those souped-up cop cars they take to the schools when they give lectures about the dangers of street racing and drug addiction. Youth Liaison Officer. The laziest kind of cop.

“Put on the kettle, Ethan.” Chandra pushes past me and heads for the kitchen table, where she spreads my file out in front of her. “Let's get started.”