Dedication
For all who have survived crazy families . . .
which is like, everybody
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
About the Author
Books by Chris Crutcher
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Copyright
About the Publisher
ChapterOne
The fact that life’s not fair doesn’t bother me. If the universe had distributed the IQ points allotted to my bio family evenly, we’d all dwell at the extreme low end of the range. But it made me “gifted” and the rest of them . . . not so much. That might sound like bragging but it’s . . . yeah, bragging; but hey, this is my story. If they see it differently, let them tell it.
So, anyway . . . the universe also made me super coordinated and quick. Nobody in the rest of my family can juggle, like, one ball, though I have to leave open the possibility that Nancy—who contributed half my DNA—ate and drank and snorted away her athleticism. I hear my sis, Sheila, is a pretty good athlete in bed. Hard to believe we’re sisters. My bio dad, Rance, is this ghost Nancy keeps at the edge of her life just so she can berate him.
I now live with another family altogether, which should be good news, but there’s something about real family; you’re connected, and that’s it. Most times when I’m with Nancy or my sister Sheila, we fight like hungry pit bulls over table scraps, but when we’re apart there’s this crazy pull to get back, so historically I’ve done crazy stuff to make that happen. If the foster system really worked, it would have put Nancy with us in foster care. That way the person who needed help most would have gotten it.
But that didn’t happen and Nancy lost three of us; there’s an older brother, Luke, somewhere. Sheila was in and out like a ping-pong ball for most of her first ten years before social services stuck her in residential treatment. They took me before I dried off; no mother’s milk for this future point guard, for which I should be grateful because God knows what all it would have been fortified with. But, no permanent home early on because if Nancy was better at anything than picking bad boyfriends, it was tricking social workers into thinking she was working on her “issues.”
Service providers? I’ve known a few. Bet I could give you the first names of enough public health nurses to populate a softball team. FRS workers? Too many to name. FRS stands for Family Reconciliation Services. That’s where your caseworker sends in a parent educator to help your mom deal with issues that arise when you’ve been sent back home for one more last chance. Issues like, should I duct tape my two-year-old daughter to the toilet seat in response to her shooting out nuclear tag poop. It’s called that when you crap so much volume with so much force that it runs all the way up to the tag in the neck of your filthy Dora the Explorer T-shirt.
Issues like, can this nice man I met at a “cocktail lounge” last night live in the basement to help with rent? No? He seems nice. Is a level-three sex offender better or worse than a level-one sex offender? Doesn’t matter? I promise I won’t leave Annie alone with him.
So here I’d be, living with well-to-do people who provided for me and funded all my passions: youth basketball, parks and rec cross-country, and track. They kept me in the finest Nike gear and runners, gave me my own room with a walk-in closet and separate bathroom. And they bought me books. Then Nancy would save up enough drug money for some shyster lawyer to petition juvenile court to send me back for that one more last try and there I’d be again, in her three-room shack that smelled like the bottom of an ashtray, waiting every morning outside the one bathroom—while her new boyfriend sat on the throne reading the entire paper after he’d used all the hot water—so I could get in to run a comb through my ratty hair and brush my teeth, and then be late for school where my counselor could give me the third degree about why my attitude, and my appearance, had taken this unexpected downturn.
You don’t tell her it’s because you’re back with your mom.
But here’s the deal: if Nancy had been serious; if she’d stopped with the drugs and the creepy brand-new best friends, I’d have aired out that hovel and lived with her till I turned eighteen—wrapped myself in athletic gear from Play It Again Sports, walked to all my practices, and complained not a second. Because in the end, blood is thicker than good sense.
But the bouncing back and forth makes you crazy.
So what you do—or at least what I do—is figure a way to get as much bio-family time as possible while living in the lap of relative luxury. This does not necessarily sit well with your bios, because when you get together you’re the one with the fancy clothes, the iPhone with the Bluetooth headphones, and the superior attitude.
It also grates on your foster family, because they notice a serious behavioral downturn after your day with anyone with the surname Boots. Pop Howard says it’s like I’ve been hanging out so far up the holler I can’t see the sun. In fact, once Nancy’s parental rights were terminated, Pop put grave restrictions on my time with her and my evil sis. Like, none.
Which turned me into a liar.
For someone continuing to get the benefit of extreme doubt, Nancy was a master at getting on the bad side of social workers. See, if you choose the life of a social worker you’re not going to make a lot of money, and people your age who majored in business and make four times your salary building websites and inventing software that lets you download free books and music snicker behind your back while they’re telling you how much they
