“That’s the biggest thing the Program has on foster-home kids,” he said. “We think wherever we’re going isn’t as bad as where we’ve been.”
She lifted her head, putting chin to chest, the diffuse neon glow of the sign turning her eyes feral. “Yeah, well, foster homes are different for girls.”
“Like how?”
“Like none of your fucking business.”
“Okay.”
“I never talk about it. Never.”
“Okay.”
She let her head fall back again. Evan followed her gaze. The water-stained ceiling looked like a topographical map. He wondered if anyone ever knew what went on inside the mind of a teenage girl.
“Do you have a legend?” Evan asked her.
“Jack was getting me a passport, driver’s license. It was still in process when…”
“Airport’s out in that case. That’s okay. They’re expecting it anyway.”
“What’s the plan, then?”
“First train departs Portland at eight A.M.”
“Okay. So a train. To where?” She waved a hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter.”
“We’ll make arrangements, make sure you’re taken care of.”
“Yeah.”
“Anything I need to know about Van Sciver, now’s the time to tell me.”
She sat up, crossed her legs. “I didn’t interact with him privately much, if that’s what you mean.”
“Anything.”
“He took me when I was fourteen.”
“He’s the one who found you?”
“No. It was a guy. Old as death. Gold watch, always smoking, wears Ray-Bans all the time, even at night.”
Something crept back to life inside Evan’s chest. Something he’d thought long dead.
Boys mass in a bedroom doorway at Pride House Group Home, Evan at the bottom, always the smallest. They peer down the hall at a man but can see only a partial profile. He is extending a solid black business card to Papa Z between two slender fingers. A gold wristwatch glints, dangling from a thin wrist.
“Mystery Man,” Evan said.
She cocked her head.
Most of all he remembered the helplessness. Twelve years old, his fate in the control of forces so large and unseen they might as well have been ancient gods. Being asked to jump and jump again, never knowing if there’d be earth underfoot, if he’d ever land.
Until there was Jack, the bedrock to his life.
When Joey had landed, it was with Van Sciver.
Her upturned face waited for him to say something. He wondered how she had scraped her way through her sixteen years. That pang knifed through him again, but he ignored it, turned his thoughts to business.
“How did he choose you?” Evan asked. “The Mystery Man?”
“He watched us all at first, playing in the yard. Just … observing. For some reason he picked me out one day, drove me a good ways to a marine base. I don’t remember which one, but I was in Phoenix, so I’d guess now it was Yuma? He walked me into a giant training facility. The whole inside of the building had been converted to an indoor obstacle course. It had everything—barbed-wire crawl, mud pits, rope climbs, tire pulls, traverse walls. The most stuff I’d ever seen, the place just crammed with it. At the end of the course, there was a bell, and when you finish, you know, you ring it. The old guy had a stopwatch. He said, ‘The sole aim is to get from Point A to Point B in the fastest time possible.’ I was wearing a dress and sandals. I said, ‘The sole aim?’ and he said, ‘That’s right.’”
She paused and again bit her plush lower lip. Her front teeth were slightly too big, spaced with a hair-thin gap. The imperfection was endearing. Without it her features would’ve been too smooth, too perfect.
“What’d you do?” Evan asked.
“I turned around and walked out,” she said. “Then I circled the building from the outside, went through a service door by the end of the course, and rang the bell. I looked across at him, and he was still standing there, hadn’t even started the stopwatch yet.”
“Smart.”
She shrugged. “It’s just geometry.”
“And then?”
“Two seconds later the old guy’s cell phone rings. There must’ve been cameras there. By the time I’d walked back around, he had a syringe in his hand. I don’t remember him sticking me or anything else.” She paused. “I never saw anyone again.”
“Where’d you wake up?”
“Maryland. But I didn’t find that out until eleven months later when I escaped.”
“Van Sciver kept you in a house for an entire year?”
“A house?” She coughed out a laugh. “I lived on an abandoned air-force installation. My bed was a mattress in a hangar. I ate, slept, trained. That’s it. Usually with other instructors. Van Sciver only dropped by now and then to gauge my progress.”
“Was he pleased with it?”
“Yeah. Until.” She pulled in a deep breath. “One night I woke up. Heard noises. A man crying. I don’t why it’s worse than when a woman does, but it was. I crept over to the raised office area, you know, up a short set of stairs. It had the only window. I looked out and saw Van Sciver stuffing an unconscious guy into a duffel bag. Then they carried the duffel toward the hangar. I ran back, pretended to be asleep. Van Sciver came in, woke me. He handed me a Glock 21, you know—the Gen4?”
Evan was suddenly aware of how cool the room was.
She said, “I asked what we were doing and he said—”
“‘It is what it is, and that’s all that it is,’” Evan said.
She stared at him.
“Cognitive closure,” Evan said. “Van Sciver’s mode of thinking. A strong preference for order which, okay, a lot of us have. But it’s paired with a distaste for ambiguity. That’s why Jack cultivated it in us. Ambiguity. That’s the part that keeps you human.”
“Question orders,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “The Sixth Commandment.“
He nodded.
She swallowed, was silent a moment, then continued. “So I took the gun. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Van Sciver walked me over to the duffel, told me to shoot it. I asked why. He said it was an order and orders don’t come with whys. I could see the guy’s outline there inside the duffel.”
In the neon glow, Evan caught a sheen on her forehead. Sweat.
She shook her head, breaking off the story. “We’ve all done shit we regret. I regret every day of my life what I did.”
Sliding off the bed, she dug in her rucksack. She pulled out a few toiletries, which she shelved to her chest with an arm, and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later the shower turned on.
Evan looked at the open mouth of her rucksack. A piece of paper had fallen out. He picked it up to put it away for her when he saw that it was a birthday card. Tattered envelope, no address.
The front of the card featured a colorful YOU’RE 16!, though much of the glitter had been worn off from handling. A well-loved card.
Evan opened it.
A pressed iris had been preserved inside, already brittle.
Know that I am proud of you, sweet girl. That I see the beautiful woman you have grown into.
Xoxo, M.
Evan stared at the scrawled feminine hand for a time, felt a stirring inside him. Was “M” the mom who had lost Joey into the foster system?
It certainly wasn’t Orphan M; Evan had left his pieces scattered on a roadway in Zagreb.
But how would “M” have been in touch with Joey? Joey would have been taken off the grid when she was tapped for the Orphan Program. Jack must have arranged some way to reestablish contact between daughter and mother—mailbox forwarding or a dead drop. It would’ve been a lot of trouble to get done correctly, and Jack only did things correctly. Which meant that whoever “M” was, she meant a lot to Joey.
Evan put the card away, careful not to fragment the dried flower further, and found a plug to charge his RoamZone.