Deo is leaning against the wall outside Carver’s Deli, munching on a bagel, when I get there. He’s a tall, thin study in deep purple today—jeans, jacket, and shirt, the last two with the collars starched to stand straight up. His boots, his backpack, and his black hair all have a faint purple sheen, and his eyes are rimmed with dark-purple liner. Even his earbuds are purple. A good chunk of his allowance goes toward dyes of various sorts—there are three laundromats in the DC area that will evict him on sight because he’s ignored their rules about dye in the machines. His style is usually a bit over the top, but Deo somehow manages to make Goodwill look good.
“And . . . it didn’t go well,” he says, after one quick glance at my expression. Deo can read my moods better than I can. We had the misfortune of landing the same set of truly horrid foster parents about seven years ago, when Deo was eight and I was nearly eleven. We left a few months later and spent about a month on the streets together before Social Services rounded us back up and spun the Wheel of Foster Misfortune again.
“I hope you at least got your phone back?” he asks around a bite of bagel. For the past year, food of some sort has been a permanent appendage to Deo’s hand. Sometimes both hands at once. At first, I teased that he was going to get fat, but then he shot upward—six full inches since last summer. Now I have to look up at him, not the other way around. This amuses him. I don’t really care as long as he doesn’t call me “Short Stuff.”
I squeeze his shoulder briefly in greeting and keep moving. “We’ll talk after my shift. I’m late.”
“Not true,” he says. “You are, in fact, extremely early. Joe had to switch your shift. Said he left a message on your phone saying he needs you to come in tomorrow, same time, instead.”
“A message I didn’t get because that idiot had my phone.” I sigh. “Oh, well, at least I’m not late again. And yes, I got the phone back, but it’s completely dead.”
“Jerk.” Deo pulls a second bagel out of his jacket pocket—wrapped, thankfully, or it would most likely have been dyed purple on contact. It’s still warm from the oven. Jalape?o cheddar, my favorite. Thank you, Joe. Deo and I would both be ten pounds thinner if my job didn’t include free bagels.
We head north, walking toward the group home where I’ve lived for the past seven months and where Deo has lived for the past five. Back in May, when one of the older kids at Bartholomew House finished high school and shifted into a transitional program, Dr. Kelsey pulled a major bureaucratic miracle and convinced the county to give Deo the open slot, arguing that Deo and I might both be more inclined to stay put and avoid trouble if we were in the same location. The people in charge of Bartholomew House are mostly okay, and they don’t give Deo any grief unless one of the girls complains that he’s borrowing clothes (not true) or makeup (probably true). It’s better than some foster homes we’ve been in, worse than others, but we aren’t complaining. Kelsey is right—the fact that we’re together for a change means that we won’t be leaving Bartholomew House until we have to.
The sun dips below the horizon as we turn onto a smaller street that winds past a few newer apartment buildings and into a subdivision of fifties-era single-family homes. I pick up the pace a bit to keep warm, and we walk for a few minutes in silence, doing proper homage to the bagels.
“So—what went wrong?” Deo asks. “Porter recognized the music, right? I mean, he looked like someone had punched him in the gut when he grabbed your phone yesterday.”
I nod. “He recognized the song and believes that it’s Molly playing it—recorded before she died, of course. Wants to know where we got it, how I knew her, or where I found it. He thinks this is a scam to get money or something.”
“Well,” Deo says, “that would be the most logical explanation. Not the correct one, but definitely more logical.”
We need to go back, Anna. Please . . . give him another chance. Deo’s right, he’s just looking for a logical explan—
Shut up, Molly. I’m talking to Deo.
She’s quieter after that, but there’s still a sense of her grumbling at the back of my mind—the mental equivalent of someone banging pots around in the kitchen to let you know they’re good and angry.
“I don’t blame Porter for questioning what I told him. But he crossed the line. He called Kelsey to check on me.”
“He did what? What did she tell him?”
“She told him to give me back my phone or she’d help me find a lawyer.” I don’t have to explain to Deo how that makes me feel. Yes, Kelsey would have been violating confidentiality if she had talked to Porter, but we’ve both had that happen plenty of times. Maybe even most of the time. Not everyone in the system honors the privacy rights of minors.
“Ha! Go Dr. K. So if he got zip from her—no harm, no foul, then. Right?”
“Well, no. It’s the principle of the thing—and he didn’t stop there. He went digging around in my records and said straight out that he could make problems for me. I’m the one trying to do him a favor, so he can screw off. I’ve had it.”
“And Molly’s okay with this?”
“Does Molly own this body?”
“Nooo. But you know as well as I do that she’s not going to just drop this thing.”
“She’ll go away eventually, D. They all do.” I ball up the bagel wrapper and turn around to shoot it into a trash can near the bus stop we’ve just passed.