“Wouldn’t that be better coming from some girl who didn’t get away?”
“Not necessarily. Let them use their imagination about what would’ve happened to you. That’s scary enough.”
“Yeah. Well. Not much touring you can do from juvie.”
“Why do you keep assuming we’re going to incarcerate you?”
“Jasmine told me when you run away from the system they put you in juvie.”
“Seems Jasmine told you all kinds of things.”
“Oh,” Allie said, feeling and sounding even more defeated. “That’s a good point, I guess.”
She sipped her water in silence.
“Sounds like Jasmine was a chronic runner. Also that she got involved in criminal activities every time she was out. It’s case by case. If we thought it was the only way to keep you off the streets and safe, yes. We would lock you up. But with extenuating circumstances . . . Well, I should warn you it won’t be my decision. Some judge in California will likely make the call. But based on what you’ve told me, you could get a second chance to stay put.”
McNew leaned back. Threw her pen on the table. As if things were getting far more serious, and fast.
“Look. Alberta. I was your age once. Hard to believe, but it’s true. I know it seems like the whole adult world is out to get you. Like nobody cares until you mess up, and then they’re all over your case. But the people in the system are trying to help you. It’s an imperfect system, and everybody knows it, but the idea is to make sure you’re okay. Now . . . having said that, I think you won’t be too surprised if I tell you we have to take you to a juvenile detention facility for tonight.”
Allie felt her stomach turn slightly, but she said nothing.
“You have to be somewhere. And we have to know where you are. And we have to know for a fact that you’ll be there in the morning so we can figure out how we’re going to get you back to L.A. Understood?”
Because it was a direct question, and the officer seemed to be waiting for an answer, Allie said, “Yes, ma’am.”
McNew glanced at her watch. “It’s late. I have to call over there and see if they’ve served dinner already. If so, I’ll order us something. Sandwiches? Pizza?”
“That’ll be hard,” Allie said. “There’s an awful lot I don’t eat.”
“Let me call and find out, anyway.”
McNew rose to her feet, hands braced on her thighs.
“I hope they’ve already eaten,” Allie said quickly. Before the officer could get away. “Because I just about guarantee you, if you take me there for dinner, I’ll starve. Dinner will be a slice of plain bread.”
For a moment, the woman only stared down at Allie. As if measuring something. Then she broke for the door.
“I’ll see what we have in the way of take-out menus,” she said.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” McNew said. She was eating spaghetti and meatballs from a round, corrugated foil container. “So you got away from the girl at the home who you thought might hurt you. And then you got away from the trafficker. Why not just call the police and get yourself resituated?”
Allie had been using disposable chopsticks to hold a piece of Japanese vegetable roll, but she set it all down again. As if the question had made her lose her appetite, which was partly true.
“Jasmine said I’d go to juvie.”
“Juvie might have been better than the street.”
“But I wasn’t on the street. I was with Bea. I knew I was okay with her. If I’d turned myself in, I’d be leaving a situation where I knew I was okay and going into this totally scary new world. Do you have any idea how many times I’d just done that? I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. I was sort of shell-shocked. I just couldn’t take one more big jump into the unknown.”
“Got it,” McNew said, her mouth full of spaghetti. She swallowed. Wiped her mouth with a sauce-streaked paper napkin. Set the napkin down. “So, I’ve been going back and forth on whether to tell you this. If it would help or hurt. But I guess here goes. I had a talk with a couple of your social workers. The one assigned to you personally and the one associated with the home. The day after you took off . . . and I mean literally when the sun came up in the morning . . . they had an opening in a foster home, and they were going to take you there.”
Allie set her face in her hands and tried to decide what she felt. All this could have been avoided. All the terror and the danger. So did she wish she had stuck it out another day at New Beginnings, even if it meant she would never have met Bea and Phyllis? Never seen almost the entire West Coast of the United States on their great adventure?
Before she could sort it all out, McNew asked, “How does that make you feel?”
“Stupid.”
“That wasn’t what I was going for. I just wanted you to think twice next time. Maybe give things another few days to play out.”
“Yeah. I see your point.”
Still, Allie decided, she would not want to go back to a world in which the big coastal trip had never happened. Weird as it had been at times, disagreeable as Bea could be, that trip was very high on a list of episodes Allie would never want to see subtracted from her life.
It might even have held the winning spot.
An unsmiling uniformed woman led her to the tiny cell that would be Allie’s lodging for the night. It looked a lot like prison. In fact, it fairly screamed prison. Then again, she thought, it was prison.
Cream-colored concrete block walls. A concrete floor painted dark green. A bed that consisted of not much more than a thin pad of mattress on a built-in shelf. A stainless steel toilet with a miniature sink built right into the top of the tank.
There was a window. But it was high over the bed, small, and surrounded by a strong metal frame that divided the opening with two horizontal bars.
All this trouble, Allie thought, everything that’s happened—it was all because I didn’t want to go to juvie for the night. And now here I am.
“You’ve eaten?” the woman asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
The woman handed her a small bundle. A thin pillow, one folded blanket, a threadbare, overbleached white towel and washcloth. Toothbrush with a tiny tube of toothpaste. Cheap plastic comb.
“Someone will come get you in the morning when it’s time.”
“Any idea what happens to me then?”
“I think someone’s going to take you to Sea-Tac.”
“Sea-Tac?”
“The airport. Seattle Tacoma. You’ll probably fly back to L.A. With a law enforcement escort, of course. But they may still be working out the details. Lights-out in an hour.”
“Oh. Okay. How do I turn out the lights?”
The woman laughed. Allie had no idea why.
“You don’t. When it’s lights-out, the lights will go out.”
“Oh. Okay.”