“What do you mean by ‘appropriate’?”
“I don’t want to…you know.” Downhill. This conversation was going downhill.
“No, I don’t.”
“I don’t want my boobs falling out of my outfit. I want my butt to be covered.”
“You can show a little boob, Bellini.” She put her hands on her hips, defiant. “You should, too. You need to bring out the seductive womanly goddess inside of you.”
“No. No womanly goddess at the Christmas show.” I felt myself pale.
“You’re dancing. I talked to my aunt. She told me about what you’re doing with Logan—rolling over his back and shooting through his legs—and this costume will be perfect. And it’ll be appropriate.” She said something else as she walked away, about me being a “little prudish” and how the black push-up bodice and cleavage and ruffles would make me look less “uptight.”
“What did you say?” I asked, quite alarmed.
“Don’t worry, Bellini,” she called as she headed out to the floor, drinks held high, her skirt barely covering her butt. “It’ll be done right. Your mom and I know what we’re doing. You’ll wear it. You’ll like it. Your boobs won’t fall out. Everything’s cool.”
Cool.
This was not gonna be cool.
Logan and I broke up long ago because of his father.
Logan didn’t know that. I couldn’t tell him.
“You’re going to hold him back, Bellini,” Drake drawled, his eyes narrowed.
Instantly, I froze, stunned at Drake’s words.
Logan was out in the field, on a clear blue day, driving a tractor. I had driven out to visit him. It was summer, and we were going to the lake with our friends and my cousins. We had a week before we both left for college, so we were trying to have as much fun as possible.
Drake was supposed to be out of the house, so we thought we’d have time alone before the picnic at the lake. He had told Logan that he was going to Helena to get some sort of specialized tool for house repairs.
Drake had recently been released from prison. He had attacked one of my uncles at the grocery store, angry about some sort of legal dispute they were having about fencing and property lines. The fight started first with a thrown watermelon, which Drake pelted at my uncle, then swiftly escalated to a fistfight. Drake swung first, my uncle ducked, and the fight evolved into an apple mess with dozens of apples slipping onto the floor. Tumbling oranges were the next fruit victims, and finally the two rolled into the avocadoes, and they were soon squished into the floor. The avocadoes, not the men.
Blood and sweat flew, as did one of Drake’s teeth. The tooth was later found by the minister’s wife stuck between lettuce leaves. Drake pulled a knife and tried to swipe at my uncle, at which point my uncle used his black-belt karate skills, and that was that.
The police watched the camera feed inside the store and knew who to arrest amid the mangled fruits and vegetables. Myuncle stayed and cleaned up the store, then paid the owner, Starling, for all the damage and gave her an extra two hundred dollars for “emotional stress.” She invited him to come back soon.
After Drake went to prison Logan’s plan was to live on his own. He was fifteen. Children’s Services got involved and told Logan he had to go into foster care if no vetted and approved family member would step up to take him into their home. They came to our high school and had a meeting with Logan and the principal. By the end of the day, Logan and I had the signatures of twenty-four adults, including my mother, two teachers, his football coach, and three of my aunts, “willing to take him in.”
Children’s Services was not convinced because there were no blood relatives involved. There was no appointed legal guardian, because of course Drake hadn’t taken care of that before he went to prison. Logan’s mother was an only child, her parents both dying within two years of her death of heartbreak, and none of his father’s relatives, who were still living in Kalispell, were deemed “acceptable.”
Logan was a minor, so that was a huge problem because it was against procedures and policy for him to live alone. He would have to go into foster care until this huge bureaucracy “figured things out” and “vetted the people who had volunteered to take him in. We don’t let just anyone take in children,” Children’s Services said. Three days later, Children’s Services sent two employees out to visit Logan at his home.
I was with him the day they arrived. Logan had reached his full height—six feet, four inches tall. He weighed over two hundred pounds. He looked like the football player he was. When they told him he was going to have to go into foster care until custody could be settled, Logan laughed, although politely.
“No, thank you.”
“This isn’t a situation where you can say, ‘No, thank you,’” the woman said, disapproval dripping from her words. She adjusted her glasses so she could peer up at him better, as if he were a bug.
“You don’t get to choose, Logan,” the man said, patting his overexuberant stomach. “You will need to do what we’re telling you to do. In fact, you will need to pack now, as we have a foster family waiting for you.”
“And which of you will be dragging me into the car to go to my new foster home?”
The Children’s Services employees squirmed.
“No one will drag you, Logan, but you’ll still need to come with us,” the man said. He hitched up his pants. “It’s the rules. We must follow the rules.”
