“You are! I wanted to stay at Patty’s, but you got in trouble, and I had to leave. I don’t want to go where you go anymore because you only go to bad places.”
“You want them to separate us, Rory? Is that what you want? You want to be alone? Because that’s what you’ll be. Alone, like you were before. Alone, like I was before.”
I could barely talk because I was crying so hard. “I want to go back to Patty. I want to play with Riley and get my sticks back.”
“That’s what you want?”
I nodded.
“Go, then. I don’t care.”
“I don’t know how. How do I go?”
“Find the supervisor on call tonight. Tell them you want to talk to your social worker. Tell them you don’t want to live with me anymore. Tell them you want to go back to Patty. Tell them you hate me. Or that you’re scared of me. Or that I hit you. Tell them whatever you have to. Just get out of here and leave me alone.”
Nikki was bawling so hard I could barely hear anything she was saying.
“What if they come looking for me?” I asked.
“They won’t.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because I’m going to tell them the social worker moved you because you were such a fucking baby and crying all the time. It’s not a lie.”
I winced at her words but still needed answers. “Are you going to kill yourself if I go?”
“Maybe. What do you care?”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. I did care. But I had to save myself.
“Come with me,” I tried. “We won’t be together, but at least you’ll be safe.”
“I’m going to stay.”
“You can’t. What if they come back?”
“That’s not your problem anymore. You hate me, remember? Besides, it’s just sex, Rory. It’s not like I haven’t done it a million times before.”
By eight o’clock that night, I was filling my black plastic bag.
Nikki didn’t come to say goodbye, but she did lay my drumsticks on the bed with a note.
“I stole these back for you. You’ll need them to buy your mansion in the hills. I love you, Rory. Even if you don’t believe me.”
* * *
20
GRACE: PLANTING A SEED
I’d known Beats for one day. One. Yet it had been enough time for him to put a dent in my heart. I’d waited for his call that night, and every night since. Four months had passed, and not an hour went by that I didn’t think about him. What had happened to him? Was he hurt, or had he chosen to walk away? With no answers, all I could do was wonder and obsess—mostly about whether he’d found another girl to bring to new heights in the towel hut. God, I was so jealous and heartbroken. How could I have fallen so hard, so fast? And how could it hurt this much?
At first, I’d thought something bad had happened to him; that he was injured or even dead. But as time went on with no word from him, I began to wonder if maybe it was me. Had I not been enough? Too pushy, perhaps? It was possible Beats wasn’t ready for the change I was proposing and hadn’t wanted to let me down, so he’d left instead. It made sense. He wouldn’t have been on the streets if the foster care system hadn’t scarred him. Who could blame him for not wanting to return? Most likely he didn’t know how to tell me to back off, so instead he’d skipped out into the night, never to be seen again.
In the weeks following his silence, when I still thought something terrible had happened, I’d done my best to search for him, but my youth and inexperience with bureaucracy was getting me nowhere. I had no choice but to turn to Emma for help. I knew it would take some convincing to get her on my side, considering the way Beats and I met, but I didn’t take no for an answer. My persistence was what finally persuaded her. Well, that and the fact she’d actually plucked her own hitchhiking boyfriend, Finn, off the side of the road on the way to a musical festival. Apparently both McKallister sisters had a thing for wanderers.
Together Emma and I called or visited hospitals and police stations and even showed up at the local DCFS office to inquire about runaway foster kids. The answers were always the same: either they hadn’t seen him, or they cited confidentiality rules. Eventually, we hit a dead end, and I had to accept the fact that I was never going to see him again.
