The Exact Location of Home (16 page)

The bald guy is standing there with my GPS unit is in his hand.

“Give it to me!” I reach for it, but he steps back and holds up a hand to push me back by the shoulder.

“I might consider selling it to you if you're polite.”

“You stole it!” I push forward, and the guy gives me a good shove. I fly back against the bunk and land on Vinnie's dirty clothes.

I look up and glare at him. “It's mine. Give it back.”

“What'll you pay for it?”

“If I had money, do you really think I'd be living in this dump? I need that. Just … give it to me. Please.” That anger that clenched my throat slides down to a sick feeling in my stomach. Who do I think I am? And how stupid was it to come here? These guys are insane—a bunch of thieves and freaks. There's not a thing I can do to get that GPS back.

I look down. A big ant crawls toward my sneaker. I step down hard and hear its exoskeleton crunch.

“Give it to him.” A low voice. Sneaker steps on the wood floor. I look up and can't quite process what I'm seeing.

Another muscular figure—bigger than the bald guy. And a fat, meaty hand held out. The bald guy puts my GPS unit in it, and the big hand reaches out to me. I ought to know that hand. It's shoved me up against lockers enough times.

I take the GPS unit. “Uh …” What do you say when you run into your arch enemy at the homeless shelter, and he decides to save your butt from a crazy bald thief? “Thanks.”

I look around. The bald jerk has gone back to his card game as if nothing happened. Another guy's reading an old issue of
Sports Illustrated
. And Kevin's standing in front of me.

“So you're here now?” he says.

“Kinda. Yeah.”

“I figured somethin' was up with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You never have pencils I can swipe anymore.”

“There's no sharpener here.”

Kevin nods. “I know.”

“So you've been here a while? How come I didn't see you?”

He shrugs. “Just got back. Place we tried to rent didn't work out.”

“Oh.” And they must not have had any family rooms left. So he's here.

“Well that's a buncha garbage!” The bald guy slams down his cards and leaves the room.

“Yeah … well … I better go,” I say. “I'm watching my mom's friend's kid.”

He nods. “See ya.”

“Yeah.” I start to go but turn back. I feel like I should say something else. Kevin beats me to it.

“Listen … I'm not telling anybody,” he says. “There's rules in here. You keep your mouth shut about what happens and who you see in the spaghetti line.”

“Got it.” On the way back to room five, I stop in the library to get
Library Lion
. Scoop's still on the bunk with his knees tucked under his chin. He doesn't look scared any more. Just sad.

“Sorry,” I say. “One of the mean guys took my GPS unit.”

“I didn't do it,” he says.

“I know,” I say. “I'm sorry I got upset.” I hold up the book. “Want me to read?”

He nods and stretches out his legs in his sleeping bag. “Start at the part where Mr. Merriweather turns nice.”

“I know,” I say.

I had my finger in that page already.

On the morning of Halloween, Gianna whooshes into social studies, spilling colored pencils like bread crumbs behind her, as the bell rings. She drops a note on my desk.

“All right, that was the bell. Write down your homework,” Mrs. Heath says. I slide Gee's note under my binder and take out my assignment book.

“For Monday, you'll need the New Deal chapter and answer questions one through three on page 178. Then for Tuesday—”

She pauses and I look up from scribbling down the assignment. Kevin Richards just walked in without any of his stuff. Nothing sets Mrs. Heath off faster than a kid who shows up without a notebook and something to write with. Everybody knows. That's why everybody's stopped writing. They're waiting for the volcano to erupt.

“Mr. Richards, how nice that you could make it.”

Kevin doesn't say anything. He just slides into his seat. He's in the front row, in the official troublemaker spot so she can keep an eye on him.

“Take out your assignment book, please,” Mrs. Heath says, even though she can see he doesn't have it.

“I didn't bring it.”

“Then take out a piece of paper on which to write down your assignments.”

Before Kevin can ask, Ruby leans over and hands him a piece. A pencil, too. But it doesn't get him off the hook.

“Mr. Richards, do you recall our policy for coming to class prepared?”

He nods.

“This is the second time this week you've failed to bring appropriate materials to class. This class, this school, is your place of work. Do you expect to have a job when you get older?”

Everyone stares at him. I realize I'm doing it, too. I look down. But not before I see how red his face is getting.

“Yeah.” His voice is tight. Controlled.

“What do you think is going to happen to that job if you show up late with none of the things you need to do your work?”

Silence. I look up. Kevin's shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath. “I'll probably lose the job,” he says and starts kicking his heel fast against the leg of his chair.

“You bet you'll lose that job. You need to develop some responsibility.”

Kevin stands up so fast the desk tips forward under his legs and crashes to the floor. He's out the door before Mrs. Heath can say anything and halfway down the hall by the time she hollers, “You go straight to the office! I'm calling there now.”

She looks back at us. “Are your assignments written down?”

Nods.

“Then open your books and start on the assignment. At the end of class, we'll talk about our Thanksgiving service project.”

Mrs. Heath spends the rest of the period on the phone while we read about Franklin Roosevelt's plan to help people who lost their jobs and their homes during the Great Depression.

“He was late,” she tells the phone. “And his attitude was completely unacceptable.”

That's the only side of the story the office will ever hear. Kevin probably won't bother to show up there. Even if he does, and even if somebody bothers to listen to him, he won't tell them the truth.

I pick up my binder to get a piece of notebook paper and remember Gianna's note. I glance up at Mrs. Heath's desk.

She's still on the phone. “He should be there by now. I'll fill out a discipline report.” She starts typing.

I unfold Gianna's note as quietly as I can and smooth it out over my notebook, like it's a regular homework assignment.

Hey Zig!

      
Happy Halloween!

Underneath, she's sketched a jack-o-lantern that looks like me. It has floppy black hair and a slightly crooked nose. Underneath that …

P.S. Are you going out trick-or-treating tonight?

P.P.S. Are you going to the dance tomorrow? Just curious. ~G

I look over my shoulder to the corner where she sits. She's looking at me. She must have watched me read her note.

She raises her eyebrows. Question marks.

I look down at her PS and PPS. And I look back at her and shake my head no. She looks at me for just a second and then puts her chin down and starts reading her textbook. Or pretending to.

“Mmm-hmm,” Mrs. Heath says. “I'd like to arrange a conference with his mother and father.”

Good luck
, I think, as I turn back to my book and FDR's speech about getting the country out of the Great Depression. I like the quote they give from his speech at the 1932 Democratic Convention:

What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security—security for themselves and for their wives and children
.

Mrs. Heath stands up from her desk and looks at the clock. “I'd like to spend the last ten minutes of class talking about our Thanksgiving service project. We'll be doing something to help the less fortunate.”

I don't think I can listen to this. I reach for my pencil to keep working on the questions instead.

“Mr. Zigonski! Care to put down your pencil and listen? This is important.”

“Sorry,” I say.

She picks up a piece of chalk and points at us with it. “You've been reading about Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the Great Depression. But what you might not realize is that there are still many families in our nation living in poverty.”

It's unreal. She's talking like she's Mother Theresa. And not fifteen minutes after she bullied Kevin out of the room.

She scribbles some big number on the board. “More than one point six million kids in American are homeless. Think about that. Kids just like you are living without a place to sleep at night,” Mrs. Heath says. “Try to imagine, just for a minute, what that must be like.” She pauses.

I don't need to imagine, so I spend her silent moment looking around at the other kids. Gianna looks like she's actually thinking about it. Alec Rayburn is sharpening his pencil, dropping little curly shavings all over the floor. Bianca Rinaldi is putting on lip gloss. Ruby is glaring at Mrs. Heath. I wonder if she feels like I do.

When I look at Mrs. Heath up there, though, she doesn't look like a monster. She looks like somebody who doesn't get it. Somebody who thinks poor kids are numbers on her chalkboard instead of real live kids without pencils at her desks.

“Now,” she says. “Starting at our dance tomorrow night, we'll be collecting canned goods to donate to the food shelf at our local homeless shelter. We'll walk over next week to deliver them.”

I feel like somebody just threw a canned good at my head. We're going there on a field trip? To deliver the canned goods. For the poor. For those kids on the blackboard.

“Eww.” Bianca Rinaldi wrinkles her nose and raises her hand. “Mrs. Heath, I'm not sure my mother will allow me to participate. That place is full of drunks and freaks. I don't think it's safe.”

I wait for Mrs. Heath to yell at her. Or send her to the office. Or at least tell her how stupid she is. She doesn't.

“It's okay, Bianca. We'll be there in the middle of the day. They require clients to be out looking for jobs or taking classes toward their GEDs during the day. These are people for whom education hasn't been very important in life, and that needs to change.”

The chicken nuggets I ate for lunch feel like they've turned to stone in my stomach. How could she say that? My mother is probably half asleep over her nursing books right now, studying like crazy so she can pass her finals in December and get a job so we can have a place again. She told me the other night she found a nice apartment. A great one close to school. But we have to wait and hope it's still available when we can afford it.

“That's not how it is.” The words fly from my mouth before I can think.

“Oh?” Mrs. Heath raises her eyebrows. I'm a good student—I still have that reputation from the days when my homework was always done—so she doesn't yell at me. “Go on, Mr. Zigonski.”

“Plenty of people there are educated and want to work. Or they're going to college. Or trying to find a job. Trying to take care of their kids. They're not all like Brother Vinnie.”

Alec Rayburn snickers in the back row, but I keep talking. “You talk about them like they're just stupid because they're in a bad situation, and they're not.”

Mrs. Heath tips her head and looks interested. “Have you volunteered at the shelter?”

My neck feels hot, and my chest is tight. I feel myself nod.

Mrs. Heath smiles. “Well, what a wonderful experience. We'll have to hear more about that another time.”

The bell rings. I'm the first one out.

I don't go to computer class, where I'm supposed to be next. I walk out the school's side door. Let them write me another discipline referral. Let them mail it home with an invitation to schedule a parent conference. Good luck.

 

I sit in the park for the last hour of school. I can't go to the library or the librarians will ask why I'm not in school.

I pick up a perfectly round pebble and hold it in the palm of my hand. It's warm from the sun and stays warm, like it has a little heater inside.

I wonder how many times I've sat in classrooms where we talked about helping the less fortunate and didn't even think about it. I wonder how many kids next to me were squirming. Guys like Kevin.

A heron flies over, fighting the wind, and I think about Ruby. Ruby gets it, even though she doesn't know about Mom and me right now. I ought to go to her meeting for the herons at city hall on Monday.

My pebble's cooling, so I pick up a new one, smooth and flat and oval-shaped. Ruby's right about those birds, and she's right to do something about it and not just sit there waiting for something to happen. I'm going to go.

Up the street, I can see cars start to spill out of the school parking lot for the end of the day. I stand up, brush off my jeans, and drop my rock.

Then I pick it up again. The lake's pretty calm today.

I close my eyes and wish for the food collection project to go away. I wish for Kevin to somehow not get in trouble when he goes back to school.

I wish for Mrs. Heath to shut up.

I wish for Dad.

I wrap my fingers around the stone, curl up my arm and fling it out at the perfect angle.

It plunks. Not even a single skip.

“I'm already babysitting for Scoop tonight. And I'm busy Monday,” I tell Mom. “I promised Ruby I'd help her with something.”

“What are you doing? And why does it have to be at night?” Mom pulls her hair into a ponytail and tightens it. She turns back to her bunk for her apron. “Help her right after school instead, and you can be back here for five o'clock.”