“If you got arrested for stealing apple juice and crackers . . .”
I paused, and he jumped in.
“And two candy bars for me.”
“Then how did Molly have the apple juice and crackers to give to my daughter?”
“Well,” he said. “It’s like this. I got away with it. Or at least, I thought I did. The lady saw me take ’em, but I was a much faster runner. But then I was out looking for a phone and I ran into two cops who were out looking for me.”
I sat still and quiet for a minute. I was wondering what I owed him. For going to jail so Etta could have apple juice and crackers. And how I could possibly repay such a debt.
“I was hoping you knew where I could find Molly.”
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta said.
“Oh. She’s not in that foster place anymore?”
“No. She ran away. You didn’t know that?”
“I did not know that, no. I did know that the place they put her bites.”
“Any idea where she might have gone?”
“Possibly.”
“Any chance you’ll tell me?”
“Not much of one, no.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll tell on her. And get her put back there. I know you will.”
“You can’t possibly know anything about me.”
“I know you’re one of them,” he said. He waved his hand in a stylized arc on the word “them.” Like a magician pointing out a magic trick. Or distracting me from one. “You’re establishment. You believe in the power structures. You think they know best.”
“Actually,” I said, “I met that woman who was supposed to be her foster mom. And I didn’t like her at all.”
“But you’ll still try to turn her in.”
“No. Not necessarily. Not if she doesn’t want to go back.”
For a moment I scanned back over my words and wondered. Could I really find her on the street, thank her . . . then leave her on the street? Then again, who was I to force her to be someplace she didn’t want to be? Especially when she would just take off again.
“Then why do you even want to find her?”
“I just need to . . . I never really thanked her properly. When I saw her at the police station that night, I made a mess of things. I just need to tell her how much I appreciate what she did.”
He was staring into my eyes like a laser as I spoke. I got the eerie feeling that he was something of a human lie detector. That he could see right through me with his X-ray vision.
Fortunately I was telling the truth.
“Well, then,” he said. “If that’s really how it is, I might have a thought or two on where Molly could be hanging out.”
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta said.
Chapter Fourteen
Molly: Special Delivery
I thought about going back, but I didn’t go back.
I don’t mean to that awful foster family, because I never thought about going back there, not even one time and not even for a second. But I thought about going back to that lady cop and asking her to call my social worker and see if she could put me someplace better.
I never did, because I was afraid I was in trouble for running away, plus I was afraid nobody would believe me and everybody would believe that terrible lady, and they’d send me back to her, and then I hate to even think how much trouble I’d be in.
It was cold without Bodhi, and I’d been sleeping by myself in the cold for maybe a week. I know people think it never gets cold in LA, but they don’t know. If they don’t live there, they don’t know, and if they do live there they still don’t know, because at night in the winter they’re inside their house.
As soon as it got the tiniest bit light, I’d go out on the street and start picking up bottles and cans, because I wanted to use as little of Bodhi’s money as I possibly could—partly because it needed to last for nearly three months, and partly because it was his. It was one thing to eat off it if I needed it, but that didn’t mean I was supposed to sit around on my butt all day like a slug and just waste it. He spent months saving up that money so maybe we could get some kind of place. Just a cheap room at a weekly motel, maybe, where we’d have a shower and a heater and a bed.
But he was right, what he said to me at the jail. He was kidding himself, and I knew that was true because even at the really cheap weekly motels you wouldn’t be able to stay much more than a week for around two hundred dollars.
I hated to even think about what he might’ve done to get that kind of money, so that was another good reason to spend it as slow as possible.
Besides, if you’re not going to walk around looking for stuff to recycle, then what the hell would you do all day? It’s not like I had a TV set or a bunch of fun hobbies.
It took about a week for other homeless people to start asking about Bodhi when I saw them on the street, because I guess before that they just figured he didn’t happen to be with me that one time, or the time after it.
I felt like I didn’t really know any of the people who lived in the neighborhood with us, but somehow they all knew Bodhi. Everybody knew Bodhi.
There was something about that seventh day—that was when everybody seemed to notice how long it had been since they’d seen Bodhi with me.
I’d spent all day walking around, and then cashed in what I found at the big, nice market that closes at night. I’d had a really good day, so I bought a hard roll and a little bit of salami at their deli,
