The Lateral

Chapter 5

I would have to explain, but it was such a mess. “Well…” I stopped, unsure. “It’s complicated.”

“Start at the beginning,” Jake directed me. He wanted to understand, but it was going to be hard for an outsider. Obviously, the onset of these problems lurked somewhere in my family’s past, but I wasn’t sure where to find it. With Meadow’s birth? No, it went back farther than that. When her mom, Christal, had started experimenting with drugs? With the first arrest of Christal’s mother, my sister Alina? Maybe it began with my own mom and all her babies, for which there had never been quite enough food, money, or anything else?

“She just got so unlucky,” I said eventually. “Nobody has it perfect, but it’s the worst for Meadow.”

“How so?”

How wasn’t it? “She couldn’t go home from the hospital when she was born. Her mom Christal was supposed to be working toward reunification, you know, cleaning up, getting a place to stay, figuring out all the social services stuff. I didn’t totally understand what was happening at the time, but I saw it play out with a few of my other siblings and their kids since then. Christal did everything wrong.”

“Is it important to know many siblings you have?”

“Half or step?” I specified, and when he said both, it took me so long to count that he told me never mind and to continue with the story of Meadow. “Ok,” I agreed, and tried again to pick out the most important details. Did it matter that back then, one of my older brothers had been on trial for felony domestic violence? Did it matter that our garage burned down that winter, or that we’d had to hide from the authorities that the water had been turned off for a while?

No, it didn’t, so I focused. “Christal had a new guy, not Meadow’s dad but someone else.” I didn’t think they were the same person, but no one (including Christal) was entirely sure about Meadow’s parentage.

Jake was waiting, so I continued. “Her new boyfriend was awful. Terrible,” I said. “He…well, the way it relates to this story is that he got in a big fight with my mom, and he wasn’t allowed around us anymore, not in our house. He also got Christal hooked on all new prescription stuff. Her mother, my sister Alina, was locked up—”

“For what?”

“Um.” I hesitated, thinking back. “I guess that was the stint she did for identity theft and fraud, those kinds of offenses. Nothing violent,” I assured him but then had to reconsider. “She did have some violent priors, but those were before Meadow was born and since then, it’s been mostly drug- and alcohol-related, possession or petty theft to support her habits. But in spite of that, Alina had always been a pretty good influence on her daughter Christal—”

He made a noise, in his nose mostly. Like “pah” but with a lot more derision.

I kept going. “With Alina gone when Meadow was born, Christal was running wild, totally unchecked. She had the problem with my mom and she and the new guy picked up and moved north, where she didn’t have anyone to watch her or to help her. My mom could have tried harder, but she didn’t want to. She and Christal had never really gotten along, beginning with the felony joyriding charge…” I paused. “There are a lot of twists and turns in this story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Skip ahead to where you got involved.”

“I always was. When they wouldn’t let Christal bring her baby home from the hospital, they checked for available relatives and they gave Meadow to my mom. I was still living there too, so I took care of her. I’d been around a lot of babies, like my nieces, nephews, and also the children of my mom’s boyfriends and husbands. Sometimes there were extra ones if friends dropped off their kids for a few weeks or months,” I explained. “Anyway, I was pretty young so even with the experience I had, I’m sure I did a lot wrong. I loved her so much, though. I never had dolls or toys, so Meadow was my baby. I was with her every day.”

“Was this in the summer?”

“Huh?” I thought. “No, she was born in the winter. In fact, she’s turning thirteen soon.”

“Why were you there all day, available to take care of her? Shouldn’t you have been at school? What grade were you in?”

“Fourth, but no one cared if I went, and I had too much to deal with at home to worry about that, too. I hadn’t ever gone much and then I dropped out for good when I was fourteen. That’s why I worry about her grades,” I said. “I don’t want that for her.” I sniffled but looked up toward the stars in the dark sky to keep the tears from rolling out of my eyes. If I wiped them, I’d mess up all the makeup that covered my bruises.

“So you’ve always taken care of Meadow, all her life,” Jake concluded, but I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “When she was eleven months old, Christal came back into the picture. She acted like she’d cleaned up and maybe she did for a while, because she peed clean at least once. I don’t know all the details. I do know that her boyfriend had relatives up here and they didn’t like that she had deserted her baby for so long, and she really loved that guy and wanted him to stick. She wanted to make up with his family so she swooped in and took Meadow, and that was it. I didn’t see either of them for years because there were a lot of problems between us, like how Alina and Mom fought about the garage arson thing. Christal took Alina’s side because that’s her mother, even though my own mom had been the one to care of her baby, Meadow, and she had also bonded Christal out when—”

He cut off that tangent. “Why isn’t Meadow with her mom now?”

“CPS in this county has been involved in their lives for years,” I said. “When Christal had the latest problem, they were ready to step in. The boyfriend she had liked so much was long gone by that point and Alina was, too. She moved in with our mom downstate because she’s in really bad shape.” I sighed. “She’s been an alcoholic for as long as I can remember and now, it’s like she’s a different person. Not that she turned nice and responsible, but that all of her worst character traits got bigger.”

“Like she’s disinhibited,” he suggested, and I shrugged.

“I don’t think she ever had a lot of inhibitions, but there’s definitely nothing left anymore. And my mom…you would have thought my mom would step up because for years, she took in kids in the same way that other people take in stray cats, but she’s older now and she lived pretty hard. She’s feeling it. Honestly, I don’t think she could deal with this situation even if she wanted to. It’s difficult to take care of a girl who hates you all the time, even if you know that she doesn’t mean it,” I said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I could see that. But you do it, anyway.”

“Because out of all the people in our family, so many relatives and half-relatives, no one wanted to help Meadow. She went into foster care.”

“When did you come back on the scene?”

“I was living in Kansas City when I heard what was going on and I drove to Michigan, I drove through the night,” I said. “But after all the rush, it still took a while for me to get established enough that they let her move in with me. She doesn’t remember me from when she was a baby, of course. It was like she was meeting me for the first time. Christal wouldn’t ever let me see her because she was really mad…you know, that’s a different story.”

“But the result is that you have temporary custody of Meadow,” Jake stated.

I nodded. “That’s the result.” I looked toward the place I’d rented for us, where she was sleeping. It wasn’t the best house in the world, and I hadn’t bought the best couch, and I didn’t make the best food. We’d gone to a cheap salon and used a coupon for her haircut and her shoes were new, but they weren’t the right kind. I didn’t provide the best of anything, but it was the best I could do at the moment.

“And there are more details, a lot of shit which you left out because it got too complicated,” he added, and I shrugged again. There was, in fact, much more, but who needed to hear all that? And where did it stop? How far were you supposed to go back, and how deeply did you have to dive into other people’s problems? There had to be a point where someone said that it was time to put a stop to all the nonsense and move on. I was trying to be that person.

“You were supposed to text me about what happened today at the school,” he reminded me.

“It was pretty typical for one of our meetings,” I answered. “How was yours?”

He turned his head and stared at me through the darkness. Well, ok then.

“The story they told was that Meadow got into a fight with some girls in the bathroom. To me, it sounds like they were jealous that she got to go to the game, and she had her new backpack and they didn’t like that, either. They grabbed it from her and stuffed it into a toilet, one that hadn’t been flushed. I told her that I would clean it but she doesn’t want it anymore. She also doesn’t want to go back to the school, which is fine because she’s suspended right now, anyway. She was too upset at the meeting to tell her side of the story.”

“Mother of all fucks,” he said, shaking his head. “What kind of bullshit is that? They suspended the victim?”

“She’s done enough that they’re ready to pin the blame on her for anything. I don’t have much doubt that she started problems in the past, but it’s mostly because the other kids are so mean to her. They make fun of her because her mom is a mess, because she has trouble with her schoolwork, because her clothes and hair were wrong. She doesn’t have any friends, none.” My makeup was totally gone, carried in streaks down my face. Luckily, it was dark and he couldn’t see that or the bruises, either.

“So you bought her new stuff so they’d like her.”

“She didn’t admit it, but I know she believed that a new coat and a nice backpack would fix some of her problems. I hoped they would help. I got her some clothes, too, and I look at her homework and get her to study. They keep telling me that more than anything else, she needs stability. I’m trying to give it to her. Kids do so much better when they have people to love them and a house that makes sense, without chaos and a revolving boatload of inhabitants.”

“Stability,” he repeated. “Now she has it.”

“It’s not making her feel better or act better. It’s not working,” I admitted.

“You know how much I have to train for football?” Jake asked me. “I take a week off after our last game, and then I start getting ready for the next season. And that’s me, a guy who already has years of work to build from. You two are starting from scratch. I imagine that it will take a while.”

“But I don’t have a while,” I said. “They’re not in any rush to remove her from my care, but they will if she does stuff like get in fights and get suspended. She has to have better grades, too, and I’m not prepared to help her. By the time I got to middle school, I had more absences than days attended. I didn’t have a clue of what was going on in any of my classes.”

“You could get tutors. Most guys on the team had them to make it through college and some needed them to graduate high school, too.”

“I signed her up for a program but she won’t go. I can’t imagine paying someone to sit there and listen to her swear,” I said. “I thought the Supportive Friends thing might work…”

“It’s Helping Hands ,” he corrected. “What if you did that, but informally? You don’t need Miss Margulies at the rec center. Find a mentor on your own.”

“I don’t have many connections here besides my friend Calandra and her mom. I couldn’t send Meadow off somewhere with a stranger,” I pointed out. “I assume that the mentors in the Helping Kids program get vetted, but there’s still danger. You don’t know what people can do to a girl by herself.” I paused. “It sounds like I’m just trying to shoot down all your ideas, but I’m not. I appreciate that you’re offering suggestions and I really appreciate that you’re sitting here in the freezing cold to talk to me.”

“You’re still cold?” He turned up the heat even more and I loved it. “Were you cold at the game?”

“If I was, I didn’t even notice. I was too excited,” I said. “Thank you again.”

“You don’t have to keep saying that. The next one’s away.”

“I know,” I agreed. “I’ve been reading all about it, and I’m getting a TV so we can watch. I have an appointment for a guy to come out and do hook-up stuff.”

“Sounds expensive,” he commented.

“Well, it’s necessary because now I know how important football is to Meadow. Also, now we’ll need to have good Wi-Fi here since she’s going to have to work from home. Ugh,” I said, disgusted. “I’ll go again tomorrow to meet with the principal. They’ll have to make time for me, and they’ll have to listen about the girls bullying her.”

“I can’t.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“I can’t go with you. We’re at the stadium all day and then we’re staying together at a hotel in Traverse City before we fly out. We have to leave early to get used to the altitude in New Mexico and we’ll be practicing there until the game.”

“I didn’t expect you to come with me,” I assured him. “But I really appreciate that you even thought about it. Thank you.”

“Stop thanking me,” he growled. “What are—"

“No, let’s talk about your day instead,” I said. “I don’t want to think about this anymore and I also want to learn all about football stuff.”

He talked a little but he kept asking more questions about us. I said a few things but I thought Meadow’s past was hers to share if she wanted to, and I really didn’t want to share much about mine. I mostly stayed vague. “I didn’t have the perfect set-up, but it was ok,” I finally stated. “Now you tell me about your family.”

“Mine was also ok.”

“You had two houses,” I remembered, because he’d said that both his parents had remarried.

“I heard envy in your voice but believe me, moving between them wasn’t like going on vacation. My mom and her new family stayed local at first, and I was there for a year or two and going to visit my dad on weekends, but then they moved to Arizona. She had a few stepkids and they had a kid of their own by that point, so there wasn’t enough room for me.”

I nodded sympathetically. “Crowded houses are hard.”

“Yeah, so I went back to live full-time with my dad in California, but my stepmother hated my ass and I knew it wouldn’t last. I left again for Arizona, then back to California, and then I moved in with a friend for high school so I could stay in one place for football. It was a smaller school but I had a better coach, and that was how I got noticed for college.”

“I’m so glad that you did,” I said. “It would have been such a loss if you hadn’t been able to play.”

“It’s a well-paying gig,” he agreed, but I shook my head.

“I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of the money, but you’re right, obviously. I was thinking what a loss it would have been for all the Woodsmen fans and for the Woodsmen team if you weren’t there.”

Jake didn’t speak for a moment, and then he turned to look at me in the darkness. He reached up and clicked on the light above our heads and I blinked. “That was a nice thing to say.”

“It was true.”

“Thank you,” he told me, and studied my face. “Were you sitting over there crying as you talked?”

“I was,” I said. “But not anymore. Now I’m thinking about solutions, like how I’ll handle everything tomorrow. It’s not fair that Meadow got in trouble for defending herself. So much in her life hasn’t been fair at all, but this is something I can fix even if I look like I was on the losing side of a fight. I’ll wear my glasses so I seem serious and high heels so I’m taller, and I’ll put together my oldest-looking outfit. I mean the clothes that make me look old.”

“I got it,” he said, by which I assumed he meant that he understood.

“Well, wish me luck,” I said.

“When you set up the meeting, let me know the time.”

“Ok,” I agreed. He must have wanted to know exactly when to start wishing the luck, I thought. I wished it for him, too, and exited the car by sliding down onto the ground. It was very high, and at any other time I might have enjoyed the adventure of getting out. Tonight, I was just tired. I walked slowly to my porch and as I opened the front door, he backed up with his usual speed and drove off.

When I crawled into bed, I looked back at the texts he’d sent me. Where was it?

There. “I got it,” he’d written, the same words he’d used tonight. He’d sent that after I’d said sorry (again) for embarrassing him by suggesting that he was the one who’d bruised my face. I’d also said thank you (again) for inviting us and had told him how much fun we’d had. So what had he “gotten” about that?

I let Meadow sleep on the couch the next morning as I snuck around getting ready. I picked my outfit by channeling my fourth-grade teacher, someone I’d admired a lot. That woman had never taken any crud from any of her students but she’d been nice as she did it. I’d always wished that I’d gotten to be in her classroom more, but that had been the year that Meadow was born…

I walked to look at her on the couch, and she opened her eyes. “The fuck!” she yelped.

“Meadow!”

“That’s the creepiest thing ever! Why are you staring at me while I sleep?”

“You’re in our living room,” I explained. “It’s small and there aren’t many other things to look at. I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back with a TV before the guy comes to hook it up. We’ll be able to watch the Woodsmen.”

She sat up. “You’re really getting a TV?”

“Yeah, I said that I would.”

“But there are only two more games this season, the semifinal and the championship,” she said. “You’d get it only for that?”

“There are two games left this year, but next—” I started to answer, and she cut me off, shaking her head.

“Next year, I won’t live with you anymore,” Meadow said flatly. “My mom will figure this out.”

I remembered wishing for things like that, too, so I nodded and didn’t argue. “Ok, I’ll be home soon,” I said.

“I just told you that you didn’t have to get a TV! Don’t you listen?”

“I’m also going back to your school,” I explained, and she jumped up.

“No, no way! Don’t go there again! You’ll make things worse.”

“I have to,” I said. “They have to know what those girls are doing to you, Meadow.”

“You’re ruining my life!” she told me, and she added a lot more about hating me with a lot more swearing. When she paused for breath, I walked to the front door but after I opened it, I just stood there.

“Please don’t run away,” I requested, and she looked at me guiltily.

“Why would you say that?” she asked instead of responding directly, which was highly suspicious.

“When I was a little older than you, I ran away from home. It didn’t go well for me and I don’t want that to happen to you, too. Please don’t.”

She met my eyes for a long moment, then jerked her gaze away. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s snowing.”

That certainly sounded like “I’m not going to run away today ” and not “I’m not going to run away ever ,” but I let it go for now. The principal had responded that she would meet with me and I had to hurry, especially since the snow was accumulating on our road. Jake also had been up early and had texted two words: “What time?” I’d answered and now I had to make it there.

I whipped into the visitor parking lot and my car skidded—maybe a tire was flat, like he had said he was watching for as I drove. But I was in a huge rush and couldn’t check. Besides the time I’d spent listening to Meadow, I’d also spent much too long creating a bun that would hold. My hair was long and I curled it for work, but it was naturally straight and it was also thick and slippery. It had taken a lot to pull it up and make it stay, but I’d thought it was an integral part of my look. This style said “mature and trustworthy” rather than “scattered kid.”

“Miss Easley?”

A man got out of a car in the row next to mine.

“Are you Ember Easley?” he called.

“Why?” I asked, and started walking fast. My “mature and trustworthy” look didn’t include the boots I normally would have worn in weather like this, so just as my tires had skidded, the soles of my shoes did, too.

“Miss Easley, Jake Koval asked me to meet you here. You are Ember Easley, correct?”

I slid to a stop. “I’m sorry, what?”

“We can discuss it as we walk,” he suggested, and I thought that was a good idea except that his shoes were as bad as mine, so we talked as we slipped and we both tried not to crack our heads open on the pavement. He was an attorney, he told me. Jake Koval had asked him to come to this meeting to observe and to make sure that Meadow’s rights were respected and that she would be allowed back into school, effective immediately.

“He thought I needed a lawyer?” I asked. Shucks, I was panting again from this walk.

“What he said to me was that it couldn’t hurt. Is this all right with you?”

We had reached the school building. “I mean, yeah, it’s great to have help,” I said. It certainly made me seem more prepared and probably scarier. “But I can handle this myself.” I hoped that I could.

“My role was to be support only.”

So I nodded. “Yes. Thank you, ok,” I said, and we walked inside onto a floor that had more traction.

For their part, the school officials were not ok with me having an attorney present. “I don’t appreciate this escalation,” the principal said frostily.

“Well, I don’t appreciate that Meadow’s new backpack with all her books got shoved into a toilet with pee in it,” I said. “I bet the janitor found it by now.”

Mrs. Dogfood’s eyes flicked to meet those of the counselor; obviously they knew about the backpack.

“Do you think that she put it in there herself? Those girls are bullying her,” I said.

“You’ll have to leave,” Mrs. Dipwad informed us.

“No, I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care how you make it happen, but you better stop them from mistreating her. Were they even supposed to be out of class and congregating in the bathroom like that? Doesn’t it violate the school rules?” It sure did, according to what I’d read on their website last night when I couldn’t sleep.

“This is what I mean about escalation,” Mrs. Dunce told me, but I had more to escalate.

“Pushing Meadow and grabbing that bag off her back is assault and battery.” I paused and pointed at the lawyer, who nodded in agreement. I had looked that up, too. “Plus, we could sue those girls and their families for the cost of her ruined stuff, and for her fear and anguish.” That might not have been the right terminology but this time I plowed ahead on my own. “We could sue the school, because this has been reported numerous times. Since I got on the scene, I’ve sent fifteen emails about their behavior and how it’s affecting Meadow. I documented all the meetings that we’ve had, all five of them. And nothing has gotten better. Nothing,” I repeated, and now I pointed at the principal and her counselor sidekick. “She’ll be back at school on Monday. If I have to come with her to protect her myself, then I’ll be here too. Those girls had better be punished and this had better stop. I don’t care what you have to do. Do something. Do anything!”

I paused, panting again. The counselor had turned red and was refusing to meet my eyes, but Mrs. Dimwit was only nodding complacently, as if I was a little kid that needed to be soothed. The bun and these slippery shoes hadn’t impressed her, or my speech hadn’t been tough enough.

Or…yeah, now I understood. “You don’t have any answers,” I said. “You don’t have a plan except for talking to those girls and asking them nicely to stop. The only thing you’ll do is schedule a session where they say bullcrap about accepting their responsibility and feeling sorry. Then Meadow is supposed to humiliate herself by admitting how awful they made her feel as she watches them lie. Maybe that works for some kids but it hasn’t worked for Blair and her posse, and that’s the only move you seem to have in your playbook. So my niece gets suspended and has to miss school for defending herself, and they get a talking-to while they sit in a circle and fake cry.”

The principal was shaking her head and sighing. “That’s incorrect, Ember.”

“You can call me Miss Easley and you know what? I’m going to the police station,” I said. “That’s where I’m heading right now with my lawyer.”

And that threat of immediate criminal charges seemed to work, at least a little. “Miss Easley, let’s work together,” the principal said, and we did continue the meeting. The attorney and I left a while later, with me feeling slightly better about a future for Meadow at that school. She would be back in class on Monday because they were lifting the suspension, and I hadn’t been kidding that I would accompany her if I needed to. Maybe I wasn’t the biggest in size, but I hadn’t grown up with so many kids in my house without learning how to scrap.

“Thank you,” I told Jake’s attorney as we left the school. “I’m glad you were copiloting.”

“Not at all,” he answered. “You did great. If you do want to proceed with any action against the parents and the school, I’ll be happy to help. I can also go with you to the police.”

“I’m going to wait to see if this works. Maybe just the threat will be enough,” I said. “I hope so.”

“In my experience, hope is a dangerous thing. It can keep us from seeing the truth, and it can keep us complacent,” he explained. “If we have hope, we may sit and wait for the ending we want instead of fighting for it.”

“I’ll also fight for Meadow. I’ll do what I have to,” I said. I thanked him again and he very nicely answered a few questions I had about a career in his field and said that I should send over any more, that he’d be glad to answer those, too.

I thought about his statements about hope as I drove to get the TV, and I thought about how he’d said no, I didn’t have to pay him for his time. Jake Koval was taking care of any and all expenses. I had been around for long enough to know not to question a gift. No matter how many strings were attached, you still got a gift, didn’t you? So I didn’t stop to wonder why Jake had hired someone to help me.

Ok, I wondered a little about why he’d done that. It probably had a lot to do with how I’d cried in his truck, I decided. I hadn’t come off like the mature woman that I was today with the neutral lipstick, knee-length skirt, and shirt with a collar. He’d probably thought that I wouldn’t have been able to handle the meeting with Mrs. Dropbear.

I thought about that for another moment and then a huge smile made my lip hurt all over again. This was the best news ever! What a win! He thought that I wouldn’t be able to handle that meeting, so he’d sent in help. And why had he done that? The answer was obvious…it was because he cared about Meadow! He cared enough to make sure that I wasn’t going to mess up stuff, and that was amazing. Now there were two people looking out for her, and one was very big and potentially scary to others.

Wow. This was a great day so far, even if I had been so nervous about my meeting and then had wanted to punch Mrs. Demon in the mouth, much like Jake had done to his teammate about the glitter. By the time I got back to the house with the new TV that I’d purchased, the fixer person was just about to show up. I made Meadow lunch, because I knew that she was capable of doing that for herself but wasn’t it nicer when another person showed you some love with food? The guy came within his appointment window and didn’t take too long to get the TV going. There was a big bill associated with this new service but that was the cost of doing business when you were making a home for someone. It was a good lesson: when you wanted a girl to be happy in your house, you needed to provide football.

Meadow and I spent the weekend together, except when I had to go to work. We watched the other teams have their playoff games and I coerced her into talking with me through continued acts of trickery, mostly by pretending a lot of ignorance about football so that she would have to correct me. Well, not all of it was pretend; I’d been reading about it and asking questions at the club, but Meadow still knew a ton more than I did.

We rewatched the Woodsmen game that we had attended and dissected it play by play. “I don’t know how many times we’re going to have to go over this. Look carefully,” she said, and reversed the footage. “That’s not illegal use of hands! Bowie never should have been called for it. It makes me sick.”

“Me too,” I agreed vehemently. She looked at me with suspicion, but I had meant it. “I just don’t understand exactly why it wasn’t the hands problem, because when the guy from the Cobras did the same thing, you said it was a clear penalty.”

“Ugh,” she said, so annoyed, but we kept talking. Another win.

The winning stopped on Sunday afternoon. I was home that day since the club was closed, and we had an argument that was one of the worst since the social worker had driven her here and she’d realized that no, she wasn’t going to live with me in her mom’s former cottage. The landlord had taken that place back, and he’d thrown out most of the stuff in it before I’d ever heard about Christal’s problems. Meadow had refused to get out of the car in the dirt-patch driveway and the argument had been bad. Very bad.

This fight about her returning to school was heading the same way. It went from me talking calmly to her screaming her head off, shrieking and shaking with anger. But I could see very clearly that it wasn’t only anger. She was scared.

“Meadow,” I said over her sobs. “You have to go to school. It’s the law and we don’t have any choice. I’m afraid that they’ll take you away from me and—”

“I don’t want to live with you, you bitch! I don’t care if I have to leave!”

“I don’t care what you want!” I snapped. “I care about what’s best for you, and that’s being here! And if those girls do one more thing, I’m going to the police. I’m going to sue them, too, and I’ll sue everybody who ever talked to them!” How I would pay an attorney was a bridge I’d cross later, but in the past, I’d done what I had to do for money. I could again.

“Oh, great,” she mocked. “I’ll just tell them, ‘Ember’s going to sue you someday’ and that will work!”

“The school is going to step up!” I promised.

But that sounded weak and empty. She didn’t want to hear it, and I didn’t blame her. This was why I’d dropped out of school, too—well, it was one of the reasons that I hadn’t cared about returning.

“I’m not going,” she told me. “I’m not.”

I searched for ideas, desperate. There was a big card I could play, but it was a risky one...I took a breath. “If you do, I’ll take you to see your mom.”

Meadow got quiet and looked at me. “You will? You promise?”

I crossed my index finger over my heart to swear it. “But you have to stay away from Blair and her friends. Don’t start anything and run if they try something on you.”

“And we’ll see my mom,” she said slowly, still watching me.

“Yes.” I had to add, “If she’s ok with it.”

“She will be,” she told me confidently. “I know she misses me.”

But as many times as Meadow had asked me, there were never new messages from her mother checking on things and saying that she cared. If Christal didn’t agree to a meeting, if she pretended to agree but then didn’t show up at the place we designated, if she disappeared again for weeks or months—there were so many things that could have gone wrong, and all of them would be my fault. Arranging a meeting was totally against the CPS rules and it could start problems with the caseworker, but the worst consequence if Christal messed up? Her daughter would be hurt. Again.

“Ok,” Meadow said, her eyes not leaving mine. “If you promise that, I’ll go to school tomorrow.”

“I promise.” Son of a biscuit, it was a relief to have the fight over with. I had kept her old backpack and she could carry that. “You’ll have a normal week.” I really hoped so.

“We have a late start on Thursday,” she mentioned.

It made sense. The Woodsmen were playing on Wednesday night in a different time zone so the game would end past midnight, and everyone was aware that the students would stay up to watch. “We’ll all be tired the next morning after we see them win,” I noted.

“The teachers say it’s the Woodsmen Flu when kids don’t come to school the day after a game,” she said. “I never did that before, but I could.”

Nope. “Want to watch them against the Cobras again?” I suggested. “Jake played so well in the second half.” She had told me that and I agreed.

We settled back down on the couch but I felt a knot of anxiety in my chest. A real parent, a good parent, wouldn’t have had to resort to this kind of bribery. I wasn’t a real, good parent, but her mother wasn’t, either.

“Ember, will you stop staring at me? It’s so creepy.”

I nodded. “Explain who Steve and Bill are,” I requested.

“Do you mean Mike, Sam, and Will? Those are nicknames for linebacker positions, the guys in the defense,” she told me, and she started on another football lecture. She let me do her nails as we watched, too, so really? The day ended on a good note. I wasn’t sure what tomorrow would serve up, but I had entered a contest for a week’s vacation in the Florida Keys and the grand prize winner would be announced soon.

You never knew.