“There’s no license number or car description. Unless someone actually spots Frankie, there are no clues.”
Leah can be optimistic all she wants, but a kid gets grabbed from a public park for two possible reasons and they’re both bad.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Leah says. I expect her to say Don’t think it. “I’d be scared, too. I am scared.”
I have a rule about crying, like maybe twice a year in really bad times, but I burst into tears. I mean, my eyes are raining. Leah pulls me to her. My losers bracket antics are supposed to cause groundings and family discord and chance meetings that turn out empty—the normal chaos of a Boots’ kid’s life. They are not supposed to end in a lost child.
When I’m emptied out, Leah says they’ll take me home and then keep looking, but I do not want to have the confrontation that is surely waiting there, and I don’t need anyone saying the bad things I’ve already said about Sheila. I don’t want to go on the attack the way I do when I’m scared or threatened, and I sure don’t want to sit in front of the local news on TV, learning that nothing has been learned.
So we cruise the neighborhoods a couple more hours, then Tim drops Leah and me at Revel 77, a local late-night coffee place on the South Hill, where I text Momma because I know she’ll back Pop off from demanding I come home so we can talk this to death. Pop always thinks he has to teach you the lesson you just learned.
I get a latte and Leah gets a coffee and sits on my side of the table where we stare out the window, happy that the tattooed barista doesn’t know us from Adele and Beyoncé.
“I hate my family.”
“And you love your family and you hate your family and you love your family,” Leah says. She squeezes me, like, tight. “We don’t pick ’em.”
“Frankie’s like me. If he had a brain he’d scream bloody murder until someone besides a kidnapper got him away from my sis. But two days at our place and he’s aching to get back. I did exactly the same thing. Mr. Novotny told me they’d have pulled the plug before I hit kindergarten if I hadn’t sabotaged every placement so I could get back to my clueless parents. I just wanted to give them one more chance to want me.”
“You were a little kid,” Leah says. “Kids go back to what’s familiar, and besides, you know and I know Nancy’s not all bad.”
“Sometimes I know it and sometimes I don’t.”
“Well, when you don’t, come ask me,” Leah says. “You gotta give her points for wishing. She wishes she could be different, and I’ll bet she tries really hard, at least in her own head.”
“Nothing lasts with her, Leah. I mean, you’re right; every promise she makes is heartfelt. But the shelf life of a Nancy Boots promise is, like, twelve hours.”
“Well that’s twelve hours more than a lot of kids get. I landed in the sweet part of my family, but I have relatives who’ve crapped on their families in ways even you wouldn’t believe.”
I know she’s right. I don’t have to spend much time in the library to read stories that make me feel lucky. Still . . .
She bumps me with her shoulder. “Family holds the strongest pull. It’s brain science. Ask Seth. We get a nine-month head start with our mothers, no matter how messed up they are. Rhythms; heartbeats. We eat what they eat, share their fluids.”
“Yeah,” I say, “and whatever else they put in while we’re there.”
“There’s that,” she says. “Biology doesn’t separate vitamins from drugs.”
“All I know is, Nancy couldn’t choose any of us over herself, and Sheila’s the same way. How is Frankie not chained to her when they go out in public?”
“Not everyone should be allowed to have kids,” Leah says.
“It was worse for Sheila than me.” I hate to stop trashing her because it’s the only thing that feels good, but right now I want Leah to understand, even though I’ve already told her this a thousand times. “I went back to the same placement every time; Momma and Pop always left the door open. Sheila blew out of every placement, and some of them were way worse than living with Nancy. But either way, they’d put her back when no way Nancy was ready, because there was just no other place. And now look at her. She’s not even two years older than me and she seems fifty. And dumb—lets every new guy be Frankie’s dad, drags him all over town, forgets he’s with her if she’s not tripping over him.”
Leah says. “Maybe your fosters shouldn’t have given her cover. They might have found him a good place by now, like they did for you.”
“Maybe, but who keeps a kid with his, what do you call them . . . maladaptive behaviors? I mean, how do you explain Frankie to some unsuspecting foster home?”
“C’mon, how hard could he be to handle?”
I remind her of some of his less ingratiating habits.
“I see what you mean.”
“Hey, Annie. Thought I might find you here.” We look up to see Walter. “This party private, or one or the other of you want to buy me a coffee?”
Leah stands, gives him a light bop on top of his head, and walks to the counter.
Walter picks up a napkin reaches over and wipes a tear from under my eye. “Rough day, huh?”
“You hear anything?”
“Heard your mom and sister screaming at each other,” he says.
“That’s always pleasant.”
“They’re supposed to be sitting by the phone waitin’ for news, but it’s your momma screaming at Sheila for not taking care of her kid, Sheila screamin’ back at your momma for not taking care of her.”
“My old social worker calls that ‘shit rolling downhill.’”
“Guess social workers are good for somethin’.”
I watch Leah coming with Walter’s coffee through a nearly
