“Yes, I do,” I repeated for the thousandth time, trying to keep the impatience out of my tone. “I can’t stay. They won’t let us stay after we turn eighteen. The funding runs out today. And I have to leave.” That wasn’t strictly true. The children’s home did have a program for their graduates, as they called us, but I didn’t fit into it at all. And though they would have found a place for me for a while, I had seen the looks on their faces. They were ready for me to go.
“I’m not going to college or tech school, so there’s no money for my housing till fall. The only security firm that wanted a trainee is in Asheville. I have to go.” That much was true.
“But it won’t be the same, Jane.”
I knew what he really meant. Like me, Bobby was different, not like the other kids at Bethel Nondenominational Christian Children’s Home. While I was just . . . different, he was a little slower than most, both physically and mentally. Bobby was seventeen going on ten. And he was lonely, just as I had been. Like me, he’d been picked on mercilessly by the other kids. Not when a group home parent was nearby, of course, or when a counselor was watching. Never then. Only when no one was looking. His life had been hell until I’d taken him under my wing in the middle of December more than two years ago.
I already had a rep as a fighter at the school, and had spent more time in detention than any other girl had in the history of Bethel. A record I was happy to leave behind me. But despite how tough I was, from the first day he came to Bethel, something about Bobby had called to me. He was like a day-old kitten, mewling in fear. I had fought for Bobby. Protected him. Made sure the other kids left him alone. With me gone, Bobby would have to fend for himself.
I had done what I could to see him safe, mainly by threatening the ringleaders of cliques that bullied the most. I’d come back to visit. And they didn’t want me unhappy when I did.
I wasn’t that tough—not really—though the years in the dojo learning street fighting proved I could kick butt when I needed to. While the other girls in the group home were taking ballet, piano, and French, I was getting tossed around by a sensei with black belts in three different martial art forms. I was pretty sure the general manager of the school, the dude who had approved the cost of the lessons, had expected the rigorous training program to knock some sense into me and teach me self-restraint. He had probably also figured Sensei would send me back with my antagonistic tail between my legs. Things had worked out a bit differently.
In the dojo, I had finally found a place where I belonged, where I fit in, with Sensei and the kids he groomed as fighters. I never stood for belt testing, but I stuck out the training program, living with the bruises, sprains, and occasional broken rib. I was good. But mostly, as far as the school counselors and their opposite number, the bully masters, were concerned, I was just really good at looking dangerous.
I also worked after school at the dojo, my first real job, cleaning floors and the workout mats, washing windows, general handyman stuff. Sensei taught me how to do the books, pay the taxes, order supplies. He was my first real friend. Even if he did knock me silly when we sparred.
I took Bobby’s hand, his flesh soft and moist, and held it, drawing his unwilling eyes to mine. “As soon as I get the trainee position and get started, I’ll schedule a few days off and come back. I promise.”
Tears filled his eyes. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
And he wasn’t. Bobby’s parents had been killed in an automobile accident with a drunk driver. Though his grandmother had taken in his three brothers and sisters, she had decided she didn’t have the strength to raise a kid with a seventy-four IQ. So she dumped him here, which I understood on one level, but it still made my brain boil. Bobby went home to Gramma’s to visit on Christmas, on Easter, and for a week in the summer. That was it. That was as much as his grandmother could take of her less-than-normal grandkid.
Of course, I never went anywhere, but I was used to it. I had always been alone.
Weak. Prey, my inner voice whispered. My own personal demon, never acknowledged aloud, never alluded to, never hinted at. The counselors would have thought me insane or possessed, depending on their religious beliefs. Either way, I’d have been medicated and sent to more counseling sessions. And been subjected to more torment by my housemates. Again, I shoved it deep and silent.
“I’ll be bringing you a present,” I said. “Something from the mountains.”
Bobby’s eyes lit up. “From your spirit quest?”