Chapter 29. Jade
Jade
After an exhausting afternoon, I lug the final box of the day down the stairs to the first floor, taking slow, careful steps. My legs burn. My arms feel like they might fall off. I’ve decided I’m not being overpaid after all.
I leave the box by the front door. That’s when I hear Conrad’s low voice coming from his office.
Checking my phone, I notice I’m well within my “allowed hours” to be on the premises, so I decide to be polite and say goodbye.
I poke my head inside, catching Conrad’s eye as he’s putting his phone away.
“Jade, come in, come in. How’s it going with Mother?” His tone suggests he fears the worst.
“I’m surviving,” I reply, wiping my brow for added emphasis.
This brings a genuine smile to Conrad’s face. “Glad to hear it!” he says. “She’s a lot to handle. And now that her gala is coming up, I’m afraid she’ll become even more—er—let’s say, challenging.
“Everything will have to be perfect, which of course isn’t possible—so she’ll likely take that out on the entire household.”
Entire household? Like him and Sid? Or Angry Rose? Or me? It really is a big place for so few people.
“I’ll be extra careful not to upset her,” I say, which gives me the perfect opening to pry a little more. “Your mother told me there hasn’t been a party here since your engagement. I didn’t know you were married.”
Conrad’s face darkens the way a chameleon changes color.
“Jade…”—his voice carries a warning tone—“I need you to stop asking personal questions. You’re here to do a job—nothing more.” His fists clench and unclench as though he’s holding a stress ball.
Then Conrad softens a little. “But no, to answer your question, I’m not married. Not really. My wife left me a long time ago.”
I stand quietly, unsure how to respond, but Conrad continues, “Look, it’s getting late. Time to go. And come back tomorrow—that is, if you can keep your mind on your work and out of my personal affairs.”
“Yes, of course. Sorry,” I say, backing toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I arrive home (home being a misnomer, since I’m technically homeless), my thoughts whirling. I can’t wait to show Holly the picture that almost went into the shredder, although I’m nervous about how she’ll react. Anything Carmichael-related instantly puts her in a bad mood.
But it seems I’m too late. Holly’s already in a mood when I find her in the living room.
She’s settled on the sofa with Chester curled up nearby. I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. My mother had that same expression on her face when I came home after a night carousing with the wrong crowd. I found her waiting for me, along with a few police officers.
You steal one car …
Thankfully, they didn’t try me as an adult (which had been a real possibility, according to my public defender). But they did send me to the Bucks County Youth Center to wait for a hearing that would determine my future.
I spent a month with kids who were much tougher than me—and not nearly as well-read. Eventually the judge let me go. The courts prefer to rehabilitate juvenile offenders, not punish them. When I stepped outside the barbed-wire fence, the first taste of freedom was a real hallelujah moment.
My probation came with conditions: no alcohol, no drugs, no skipping school, and definitely no more grand theft auto. But there weren’t any stipulations about fighting.
The obnoxious girl, hereafter known only as My Antagonist, should’ve known when to shut her big mouth. From the moment I got back to school, she harassed me nonstop. Jailbird. Jade Capone. She asked about my girlfriends in Baby Jail—a name I liked and adopted.
She kept running her mouth like that, thinking she was funny until her mom got the bill from the dentist.
I ended up in front of the same silver-haired judge as if I had taken a full-circle ride on the courthouse’s revolving door.
The next thing I knew, I was back in Baby Jail for at least another month until my disposition hearing, when the court would decide a fitting punishment for a broken nose and two missing teeth.
Baby Jail had a special stench that no disinfectant could kill. To this day, overhead fluorescent lighting makes me twitch. And don’t let the “youth center” part fool you—it was a prison for the under-eighteen crowd.
My room was big enough for a toilet and sink, a small metal cot holding a threadbare mattress, and scratchy blankets that the army would reject.
The first rule of Baby Jail is you follow the rules—or you pay a price.
To get back into our room, we had to stand in line in front of our cells, hands behind our backs, waiting for the buzzer.
I got used to that part. It was the buzz that locked the door behind me that hurt most. For a girl who’d been running her whole life, I had nowhere to go.
There was nothing to do but wait for the next buzzer to go off.
As part of my court order, I had to meet with a therapist three times a week. She was so young she could have been my sister, with wavy dark hair and a sweet smile.
At our first session, she asked the most obvious question: “Jade, why are you in here?”
She knew my record. What she wanted was the real reason.
I could tell her some of it, but not all.
“My father is an abusive asshole, and my mother is too drunk to care,” I said. “So stealing and fighting are my ways of putting a little joy into each day.”
“Do you think your behavior is a cry for help?” she asked.
I set my elbows on the metal table separating us, leaned in, and locked eyes with her. “Lady,” I said. “Think of it more like a scream.”
Now, out of nowhere, it’s Holly who looks ready to scream—at me, no less. I had planned to thrust the photograph I stole from Maeve into her hands and call out her deception with hard evidence, but Holly slaps her phone into my palm instead.
“I would like you to call your aunt Alice,” she says, deadpan like she knows a fuck-ton more than I want her to.
Shit.
I try—and fail—to keep my voice steady. “I told you, Alice is awful … but she knows I’m alive. I’ve texted her. That’s good enough.”
Holly’s face tightens. She either doesn’t believe me or doesn’t care. “I’d like to talk to her,” she says.
I hand the phone back to Holly like it’s a hot potato. “No thanks,” I say.
Her face is inscrutable as she focuses on her phone, searching for something. The next thing I know, the device is back in my hands.
I gulp when I see a GoFundMe page in a browser window.
It’s a terrible story about a sixteen-year-old boy from Pennsylvania who became an orphan after a drunk driver killed his parents.
According to the graph, the fundraiser was going gangbusters. Nearly ninety thousand dollars had been raised—well over the goal.
I knew the GoFundMe was making the rounds, but I didn’t think it had gone far enough to land in Holly’s lap.
Fuck.
Holly recites the highlights from memory—though I also know them verbatim.
“He’s from Bristol, same as you,” Holly says, sounding sarcastically amazed.
“And he has an Aunt Alice as well. Go figure. But this Alice seems quite nice—starting the GoFundMe to raise money to cover funeral costs and education expenses. The boy’s parents were killed by a drunk driver on I-95 while returning from dinner with friends, leaving their only child—a teenage son—an orphan. Sound familiar, Jade?
“Accidents happen, but what are the chances that two kids from the same town experienced the same tragedy on or around the same date? I’m no statistician, but I’d say you’ve got a better chance of being struck by lightning—thrice.”
I swallow hard. It’s like I’ve walked into that living room full of cops all over again. Busted. “Look, Holly, I know this looks bad, but I can explain.”
Holly folds her arms across her chest. “Oh, please do. I’m all ears.”
My mind goes blank. My internal lie machine has shut down at the worst possible moment, leaving me with one terrible option—the truth.