She paused, but he didn’t say if he did.
“That dancer who used to wear those big hats with all the fruit on them? I thought she’d gotten arrested or something, and that when they came up with the law about the reading of rights they named it for her case. But then my teacher said it had nothing to do with her. But somehow I still got it in the back of my head that it was about someone in her family. Like maybe she had a big, bad sister who got in trouble with the law.”
Allie stopped talking. A voice in her head expressed relief about that. It said, Wow. What the hell was all that just now?
The room had fallen silent again. So she figured Johnnie Macklin must have been wondering, too.
“I guess that’s a weird thing to be talking about at a time like this.”
Still nothing.
“I mean . . . is it?”
He looked up into her face. And there it was again. Just like the last lawman to look into her eyes.
This is very bad, what’s happening to you.
Not that she didn’t know it. But her brain was taking time to catch up. Meanwhile other people’s brains had already arrived.
He spoke, startling her for no apparent reason.
“You’re asking me what I think?”
“I guess.”
“I think this sucks, what you’re going through right now. I think I wish there was more I could do to help you. But I can’t think what that might be. So I figure, you just handle this whatever way works for you. I’m not inclined to judge.”
That was the moment Allie’s brain caught up to everybody else’s. And she cried. Mouth and eyes, both. She just let it go.
Chapter Nine
Controversial Suitcases
The woman from CPS made Allie wish for Johnnie Macklin back, with his blue uniform and all. Allie had at least felt she and the cop shared some sort of familiar humanity. Allie figured this new person, whose name she had already forgotten—or blocked—had been sent because Allie was supposed to feel more comfortable with a woman.
It wasn’t working.
In her fifties, she was one of those women who wore nylon stockings under her polyester slacks. Knee-high or actual panty hose, Allie didn’t know. And didn’t care to know. But Allie could clearly see them at her ankles, because her slacks were too short. And Allie simply had no way to relate to any of her. Plus, she’d introduced herself to Allie as her social worker. There was really no way to wrap her head around that.
“You should be gathering your things,” the woman said.
She’d given Allie a sheet of paper with a list of things to pack. A handout of sorts, but for life instead of classwork. It sat on the bed beside Allie’s hip, as untouched as humanly possible.
Meanwhile, the social worker was filling out a form, or just making notes. She didn’t have a clipboard, only a file folder that kept bending as she pressed her pen down. Allie couldn’t help focusing on the small ironies and weirdnesses of her situation. Rather than looking the big picture right in the eye.
Allie didn’t make any moves toward packing her things. She wasn’t trying to be difficult. Her body just seemed fresh out of locomotive abilities. She remembered a similar feeling when she’d had the flu the previous year, and then after a week or so she’d tried to get up and go back to school—with astonishingly poor results. Her body felt like a giant bag of lack. Lack of motivation. Lack of strength. Lack of rigidity. Lack of caring.
Nothing seemed to be in working order.
“How many of your grandparents, if any, are living?”
“Two.”
“Good. That’s good. We’ll contact them and see if they’re willing to take temporary custody.”
“I don’t think so,” Allie said.
“It pays to ask.”
“They both live in nursing homes.”
“Oh.”
The woman had been using an artificially upbeat voice. But on the word “Oh” its facade cracked. Because, really, there was nothing to be upbeat about, not anywhere on the premises, and they both knew it.
“What about aunts and uncles?”
“No. Neither. My mom was an only child. My dad had one brother but he was much older, and he . . . passed away.”
Social Worker Lady made notes on her wobbly file in silence.
“Friends whose parents might let you stay in the very short range?”
Allie sighed and closed her eyes. She missed Angie. Angie might have gotten her out of this.
“I really only have three friends. Most people don’t like me much. My best friend Angie just moved to Michigan with her family. And I mean just. They’re probably still driving. They haven’t even moved into a new house yet. And then my other friends . . . well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe there are only two. One of the girls I was thinking of, Paula . . . yeah, she’s my friend all right. But she’s scared to death of her dad and so am I. She could never ask him a thing like that. And I wouldn’t go near her house on a dare. And the other one . . . I don’t know. I don’t think she really likes me. Sometimes even the people I think of as my friends . . . I wonder if they really like me.”
Then Allie closed her mouth, humiliated at most of what had just spilled from it.
“Okay,” Polyester Lady said. “Not hearing much there.”
“So what happens to me?”
“I’ll figure that out. It’s what I get paid to do. I’ll need to find you a placement.”
“What kind of ‘placement’? I don’t even really know what that word means. I mean . . . I know what it means in general. But I’m not sure what a placement would look like in a situation like this.”
“We always strive for a foster home placement. That’s most like the family setting we know children are used to. I’m sorry to say right at the moment there’s not one available. Not even an emergency foster home. I just couldn’t get one.”
A pang of fear constricted Allie’s chest, making it hard to draw a full breath. Of course she had been afraid before. Many times. Including every minute of that evening. But this feeling was distinctly new.
“What do we do, then?”
“Well, I have to find you one.”
“Where will I be while I’m waiting?”
“Sometimes, just in a real emergency, we might take a teen to juvenile detention. Short-term, of course.”
In the silence that followed, Allie noticed her mouth hanging open, but couldn’t focus on how to fix it. There were too many other things standing in line waiting to be figured out.
“That’s jail.”
“In this case it would simply be—”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Allie shouted, her voice an embarrassing screech.
“I understand that, dear, but I’m just temporarily short on options. We have an opening in a group home, but it’s not exactly procedure to use them as an emergency placement. Or to drop a teen off there late at night.”
“Please don’t take me to juvenile . . . jail. Please. Anything is better than that.”